Category: Teaching & Learning

Zoe had always wanted to study abroad. When looking at colleges, she was drawn to Lehigh University because of something she saw called “Lehigh360.” As the name suggests, Lehigh360 is an institution-wide initiative that helps students see the world through a broader angle by engaging in high-impact practices, like traveling to different countries, conducting research, or working on real-world problems.  

“That said to me, ‘This school cares about these experiences and the students who want to have them,’” said Zoe, now a rising junior at Lehigh who spent last summer in Africa. “Lehigh360 connected me with an amazing opportunity that literally changed my life.”  

While it continues to accommodate students like Zoe who gravitate towards new experiences, Lehigh360 is also there to inspire the larger number of students who, for whatever reason, do not. Now in its third year, Lehigh360 aims to equip every student at Lehigh with the information, access, and encouragement to pursue projects or programs that can prepare them for life, as well as career. Part database, part marketing campaign, Lehigh360 seeks to fill the access gap around these opportunities by addressing a number of barriers, whether lack of awareness, affordability, or self-confidence. 

“We want all students to have these kinds of transformative experiences, and we want a more democratic, egalitarian process, where any student that comes here should be able to participate in them,” said Michelle Spada, the director of Lehigh360. 

Spada works within Lehigh’s Office of Creative Inquiry, where Lehigh360 was, fittingly, created. Formed out of a desire to have students work on complex problems through open-ended projects, the Office of Creative Inquiry is an academic and non-academic vehicle for digging into big global issues. Its core program is called “Impact Fellowships,” through which students work in small teams and with faculty mentors on a host of global and local issues over two semesters with two to three weeks of on-site fieldwork in the summer.   

Within the Office of Creative Inquiry, Bill Whitney is assistant vice provost for experiential learning programs. Having seen the positive impact of the office’s work on students who engaged, Whitney and his colleague, Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry Khanjan Mehta, were curious about how many of the university’s students were taking advantage of similar experiences on campus. What little information they found proved disappointing. When they asked students and alumni about study abroad or leadership or mentorship opportunities, a lot of them said they hadn’t participated in them; many said they didn’t know about them at Lehigh. 

“It was clear then that we needed a better way of getting all these ambitious, driven, capable students doing things that are outside of just their march to degree, as important as that is,” Whitney said. “That’s what led us to Lehigh360.” 

Whitney said part of the urgency to improve access to high-impact programs and experiences stems from the evidence of their significant educational benefit. Their longer-term benefits, including helping to develop a sense of purpose and fulfillment in life and career, have broad appeal for many worried about the lack of purpose so many young people are reporting. 

As strong advocates of this work, Whitney and Mehta began to convene campus stakeholders and alert them to the gap that existed in connecting students with these evidence-based practices. It was not a tough sell, given the school’s strong history of learning through doing. Best known for engineering, Lehigh’s close affiliation with Bethlehem Steel, once the anchor industry in the region, offered a host of work/learning opportunities that still exist today.  

“There is a historical connection to experiential learning that I think everyone is on board with here, and there are these incredible pockets of signature high-impact opportunities,” said Whitney. “The problem is they exist in totally different spaces, and there’s no connection between them. There’s no common place to find them or learn how to get involved.”

Whitney met with over a hundred campus offices across numerous departments to achieve a significant level of buy-in for a campus-wide effort to organize and promote the many opportunities. They created a director-level position for Lehigh360 and hired Michelle Spada. Spada had previously worked on one of Lehigh’s high-impact opportunities — the Iacocca International Internship, a fully funded program for students who have some level of need — and before that, for an Africa fellowship program at Princeton University.  

Spada said her previous work opened her eyes to the equity and access issues that exist in these programs. “Too often with these high-impact practices, we are just passing students back and forth — those that are really good at writing applications and presenting, those who happen to be bumping into the right people. But what about the others? Do they even know these opportunities exist or how they may get funded for them?”  

Spada said the accessibility issue becomes even more pronounced considering the advantage these experiences have in today’s job market. Employers looking for distinctions beyond G.P.A. are eager to see what kinds of activities or work/learning experiences candidates have had in college. Those who decry Gen Z’s lack of readiness are likely to see working on real-world problems as a protective factor.  

“When you consider that employers are putting an emphasis on these experiences, often over G.P.A., it becomes our responsibility to be much more intentional about them,” Spada said.  

Lehigh360 offers a number of on-ramps to these opportunities, starting with communicating and promoting the benefits of doing something in addition to that “march to degree.” The vision for Lehigh360 is to help students find their place in the world, which includes knowing what the world needs from them. “We ask students, ‘What excites you? What really lights you up?’” Whitney said. “But we also ask, ‘What problems in the world do you want to help solve?’”

The vision for Lehigh360 is to help students find their place in the world, which includes knowing what the world needs from them.

In its most basic form, Lehigh360 is an accessible database and a toolkit that students can use to explore what opportunities exist. Students can query a number of different domains, such as travel in a certain part of the world, work internships, research opportunities, and special programs like fellowships or scholarships.  

Students are introduced to Lehigh360 in their first year and reminded of opportunities through different touch points, like academic advising, student-facing services, and classroom presentations. Student “opportunity guides” help their peers with applications and references. The school even offers a pre-orientation Lehigh360 course to get students thinking about these experiences before they matriculate and to widen their perspective of what is possible.  

Sometimes getting a student to participate in activities outside their comfort zone involves more than just providing good information. Roisin, a rising junior at Lehigh, is currently in Edinburgh, Scotland, working for a social enterprise that helps fund small businesses in developing countries. The two-month position follows her previous internship in Uganda, an experience she said she never would have had without Lehigh360.  

“As soon as I got the internship in Uganda, I went straight to Michelle and told her how nervous I was, and she was so helpful,” Roisin said. “She told me about the good experiences other students had had with the same program and showed me the value of doing this in my first year. She told me, ‘You will learn so much, and then you can apply that in everything you do in the three years you’re back at school.’” 

With Spada’s encouragement, Roisin went to Uganda, where she taught English to elementary students, taught the staff to play rugby, and met one of her best friends. “It was the best experience of my life — so far,” she said. 

“My experience last summer really opened up my perspective on the world,” Roisin added. “As far as teamwork and working with people I didn’t know, I just feel like I am so much more of a well-rounded person. I think everyone should be taking advantage of opportunities like these because it has honestly changed me for the better as a person. It has affected my mental health, my happiness.” 

Roisin said the equity focus of Lehigh360 is important to her. She was able to participate in part thanks to being a “Soaring Together Scholar,” which involves a full-tuition scholarship to the university and a $5,000 stipend towards an experiential learning opportunity.  

Spada believes initiatives like “Soaring Together” are small first steps in addressing the financial barriers many students encounter in even considering these programs. She and Whitney are working on leveling the playing field in this regard by connecting students to funding sources and securing paid internships for students who cannot afford to give up outside employment. 

An important part of the equity work involves getting a better understanding of who participates and why. Following up on Whitney’s informal inquiry regarding awareness, Spada has engaged a student research team called “Impact Trails” to do qualitative research to help answer questions, such as “How did you get involved?” and “If you are not involved, what were the biggest barriers?”  

The research itself is a high-impact opportunity for students and another example of how to connect learning to doing in college. “When I hear people talk about their education, I hear a lot about wanting their classwork to translate into action and into what they may want to do for the rest of their lives,” said Taylor, a rising sophomore at Lehigh and a member of the Impact Trails team. “I wanted to conduct research, and when I learned about Lehigh360 from a presentation in my first-year engineering class, I immediately looked at those opportunities.” 

As the research continues, anecdotal evidence suggests Lehigh360 is taking off. Students said most of their friends now look into opportunities on the Lehigh360 website. Alumni lament it did not exist when they were at the school. Whitney said the effort to provide a common platform for the many opportunities that exist for students has faculty and administrators eager to get their programs included.  

Still, he worries Lehigh360, like many initiatives in higher education, may be viewed as the passion of one department, as opposed to the culture of the entire university. The one thing he said he does not worry about is buy-in from the students.  

“The students that come here, or any university, are ready to thrive. They are ready to flourish. It’s our job to help them do that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s like a win-win.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Character’s Comeback

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Character in Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More about the ECI when our series continues. 

The first time Willow Clark had been outside of the United States was as a second-year college student on a semester abroad in Costa Rica. Her experience there working for an indigenous women’s organization and living with an indigenous host family changed her life in ways she could not have imagined. It also gave her the confidence and the motivation to pursue a number of other experiential learning opportunities in her remaining years at Nazareth University, a liberal arts institution in Rochester, New York.

Clark will graduate from Nazareth next month having participated in 13 experiential learning programs, five of which were study abroad. As impressive as this sounds—and is—Clark’s experience with travel and service is the norm at Nazareth, where students begin experiential learning as early as their first year.  

To Nazareth University President Beth Paul, what could be construed as a resume-stacking exercise at some schools is the path to personal growth at hers. “Experiential learning is at the core of what we do,” she said. “While it is still a ‘checkbox’ at many institutions, here it is a dominant form of learning.”

It has long been established that experiential learning (EL) in college, typically in the form of internships, study away and service learning, produces positive outcomes, such as improved retention, engagement, graduation rates, and career preparation. Yet, despite the evidence, experiential learning has not been adopted as a fundamental pillar of higher education for a variety of reasons: it can be resource intensive; require extra work on the part of students and the school; and be intimidating for those who have not had much exposure to learning outside the classroom. The result is an uneven distribution of EL opportunities that are often limited to the privileged or the highly motivated. 

Nazareth, on the other hand, felt the evidence of the benefits of EL was so compelling that it was the school’s moral responsibility to offer it to all students. To achieve this goal, the school has implemented a systemic approach to EL that addresses each of its typical barriers by integrating it into the curriculum, matching it to students’ interests, making it accessible to all students, and starting early. As reflected in the 2023 journal article, “Sparking Early Experiential Learning:  Enhancing College Student Participation Through Support, Structure and Choice,” Nazareth has “flipped the narrative” on experiential learning by making it the responsibility of the institution, not the student, and by offering it to everyone, including those who participate the least and may benefit the most.

Nazareth felt the evidence on the benefits of EL was so compelling it was the school’s moral responsibility to offer it to all students.

Experiential Roots 

Nazareth’s intentionality around experiential learning is part of its DNA. Founded as a Catholic school by the Sisters of Saint Joseph in 1924, Nazareth University has been committed to EL as a way of living its mission “to serve neighbor to neighbor without distinction, to be of and for the times, and to work for progress.” As it celebrates its 100^th anniversary, Nazareth is doubling down on these traditions and strengthening what it calls “change-maker education,” set forth by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  

“We are a community of people who choose to work for progress,” said Paul. “Our education is helping students develop the capacity, the tools, the mindset, knowledge, and skills that will help them go out and make a positive difference in the world.” 

“Nazareth is one of those places that is very true to its mission,” said Emily Carpenter, Nazareth’s associate vice president of experiential impact. Carpenter is well versed in the benefits of EL and other high-impact practices, having studied and published on the subject. She says there’s nothing more gratifying than seeing the evidence play out in real time on campus. 

“Experiential learning at Nazareth is this beneficial spiral that helps our students feel like they belong,” she said. ”It keeps them here. It helps them figure out what they want to do with their lives. ‘Am I going in the right direction, or do I need to change course?’ And it gives them the experience to become more confident and more willing to take on more opportunities for growth.” 

“Experiential learning at Nazareth is this beneficial spiral that helps our students feel like they belong.”

The school offers eight learner-centered pathways, including mentored research and community-engaged learning, designed to speak to students’ individual interests. A biology major may want to do research with a faculty member or mentor. A musician may choose to engage with a local performing arts organization. The backbone for this activity is The Center for Life’s Work, led by Carpenter, which offers a coaching model for all students that starts in their first year and goes beyond traditional career development to include navigating an array of experiential learning opportunities at Nazareth. 

In 2010, Nazareth made EL part of the core curriculum, and many of its 60 majors have specific EL requirements. The intent is to strengthen the EL experience with credit-bearing courses and opportunities that are both curricular and co-curricular. Often, these active learning experiences are baked into courses. “You don’t have to sign up for it. You don’t have to pay for it,” said Carpenter. She pointed to one example of an English literature class in which students read the same books as incarcerated individuals in the community and discussed the material with them on Zoom.

“It was amazing to see how much they had in common.” 

Providing the SPARK

In an attempt to address what the literature showed to be a participation gap in experiential learning, the school implemented an award-winning grant initiative in 2018 called Students Pursuing Academic and Real-world Knowledge (SPARK). Available to all first- and second-year students (as well as transfers) with a GPA of 2.5 or higher, the SPARK grant offers a $1,500 scholarship and tuition waivers to help cover costs for international experiences, unpaid summer internships, or mentored research—three among the eight EL pathways that often require more money and time. 

SPARK was designed with both equity and early participation in mind. Carpenter says not all students embrace EL immediately, particularly first generation or low-income students who are less familiar with the concept, or students who are reluctant to step out of their comfort zones. SPARK grants cover a large portion of the program fees and flights associated with short-term programs, which the coaches in the Center for Life’s Work help identify. Early engagement in EL programs paves the way for additional involvement, leading to a cumulative effect of EL’s benefits and a job-ready repertoire of real experience come graduation.

 “SPARK can literally be the nudge that students need to engage early,” Carpenter said. “Sometimes the student who does a short-term study led by a faculty member in the summer says, ‘I could totally go abroad for a semester, or I could absolutely take that internship in another city.’”

President Paul sees SPARK as central to Nazareth’s ethos. “At many institutions you have to wait until you graduate to make an impact in the world. Here you are working on real world problems right from the beginning. SPARK is the mechanism that allows for that.” 

For many students at Nazareth, SPARK is the difference between getting in the game or sitting on the sidelines. And for these students, the win can be even greater. In her journal article, “Sparking Early Experiential Learning: Enhancing College Student Participation Through Support, Structure and Choice,” Carpenter reports on SPARK participation and outcomes overall and related to students from underserved backgrounds. The results show the value of even a small amount of incentive funding. 

As of spring 2025, over 1,350 students participated in SPARK’s three pathways. Participation in total credit-bearing summer internships increased 125% in 2018, the year SPARK was introduced. Study abroad participation also jumped, with short-term programs increasing 157% in the first year. Underrepresented minority students comprised 15% of Nazareth’s total population at that time but made up 20% of SPARK participants. 

The research also found that GPAs, retention rates, and graduation rates of SPARK participants were consistently higher than those of the non-SPARK participants, with the impact being particularly noticeable for underrepresented minority students. These students experienced a 42% bump in four-year graduation rates, and average GPAs increased from 2.68 to 3.32.

“This is consistent with the literature that says that when students from underrepresented backgrounds participate in high-impact practices, they benefit even more than their majority peers. Whatever all students are getting, they get an even bigger boost,” Carpenter said. 

The SPARK program continues to maintain a 99% first-to-second year retention rate among participants. GPAs of SPARK participants average 3.5, compared to 3.1 for non-SPARK participants.

The Wellbeing Factor 

According Gallup, engaging in experiential learning and other high-impact practices, like having a mentor in college, positively influences a student’s wellbeing long after graduation. Carpenter hopes to validate this theory with her own data on Nazareth alumni, though doing so may take several years. Meanwhile, it is clear that Nazareth’s adoption of early EL experiences is part of the school’s wellbeing agenda—what President Paul calls “the student thriving strategy.” 

“Experiential learning is a central part of learning to thrive,” said Paul. “You have to be able to open yourself up to new and different opportunities. You have to be able to take calculated risks. And you have to be able to see things from multiple perspectives.” 

In addition to the EL requirement, Nazareth has a wellness requirement as part of its core curriculum. The requisite can be completed by taking a yoga class or being a member of a varsity sport—or students can take a course within their major that includes a wellness component. Unlike many schools that continue to delineate wellbeing from other departments, Nazareth has a Wellness Collective, led by Kim Harvey, the associate provost for student experience and dean of students, who reports directly to the provost. Harvey brought together a diverse group of administrators, academic deans, and student affairs professionals to consider how every department within the school is thinking about the wellbeing of students, faculty, and staff.  

“Using the ten dimensions of wellness that focus on areas such as financial, creative, digital, etc, we’re tapping into all of these individual aspects to help our students develop skills that they will use well beyond Nazareth in their future work,” said Harvey.

For Willow Clark, personal growth was a big part of what she gained from her EL experiences at Nazareth. As she heads into her final opportunity abroad—studying the Holocaust in Germany and Poland—she reflects on how what she’s experienced has impacted her wellbeing. 

“When I think about my experience in Costa Rica, I would say it was the best and hardest three months of my life. It tested my mental health and my ability to relate to people. There was culture shock and stress. But ultimately, putting myself in that position made me stronger. And ever since then, I’ve really leaned into the idea of seeking that discomfort in my life because it is those experiences where I feel the most growth.”  

Around 2021, administrators at the University of Utah discovered an unsettling pattern while reviewing student data: In an effort to satisfy requirements and pass some mandatory courses, some students had needed to retake a class five, ten times, or more. In one example, administrators found that a student had spent over $50,000 taking a single math course. These repeated attempts went unflagged because academic advising and course tracking systems were siloed instead of fully integrated across departments. In effect, when it came to the university body, one hand didn’t know what the other was doing—and neither one was reaching out to the student struggling with the path toward graduation.

The revelation brought into focus the number of students struggling with key courses without sufficient support or intervention. But more broadly, it illuminated a systemic disconnect: a lack of coordination between advising, academic support, and course scheduling, which was likely contributing to Utah’s unsatisfactory retention and graduation rates. The path towards a solution was paved with integrated technology and data transparency.

“University policy hadn’t been updated in over 30 years and was kind of adrift, just stacking additional credits on top of requirements. No one had made the case about how that impacts degree completion, how that impacts debt, and tying those things together in a really simple, clear way,” says Chase Hagood, vice provost for student success, who was hired in 2021 to be part of the new initiative’s leadership. “But not everyone was behind the open sharing of data. What does it take for a whole university to come together to say, ‘We believe in the exceptional educational experience. What is it going to take to get us there?’ We joined the Innovation Alliance, and the Coalition for Transformational Education, and getting in those peer groups helped elevate the work we do.” 

University leaders recognized the need for a more integrated, proactive approach, beginning with more democratized data. Within two years—and the addition of a new president and provost—this recognition had become forged into a commitment, leveraging EAB’s Navigate360 as the CRM platform to connect the campus. This became the tech muscle behind Navigate U, a 2024 university-wide initiative aimed at improving metrics of student success, including retention and graduation rates. Utah is banking on software and data analysis to follow individual student performance, flag potential issues, and introduce  interventions—and on the horizon, even track behavior trends.  

Eight Pillars and Key Features

University leadership recognized that existing approaches had “topped out” their effectiveness at steering 32,700 students toward their graduation goals. A new comprehensive strategy was needed, one that put the data capabilities to work under pillars of priorities, each with key features of innovation. The pillars of Navigate U were designed to bring together student support services, streamline policies, and integrate data systems to provide real-time insights into student progress through a structured, coordinated, more supportive approach.

“This whole Navigate U method is about looking at the institution and figuring out how we can prepare as clear a pathway as possible to help the student through here in four to six years,” says Brandon Johnson, senior associate dean of student success and transformative experiences. “By asking those questions, we stop blaming the students. We stop blaming high school for lack of preparedness. If we admit a student into the university, we should do everything possible to make sure that they are as successful as they want to be.”

“If we admit a student into the university, we should do everything possible to make sure that they are as successful as they want to be.”

One key feature of Navigate U is its proactive advising system. Previously, students often had difficulty knowing where to go for guidance, as advising structures varied across colleges. Some students had clear academic roadmaps, while others struggled with course selection and degree planning. Navigate U introduced a centralized approach, ensuring that all students are assigned an advisor with clear, standardized expectations for advising practices. Advisors now have access to real-time student data, allowing them to identify students at risk of falling behind and intervene earlier. 

Another feature is the data integration and early alert system. In the past, crucial information about students—such as course performance, attendance patterns, and engagement with support services—was scattered across different departments. Navigate U centralizes this data through the EAB Navigate platform, enabling faculty and advisors to monitor student progress more effectively. This system can flag students who may need extra support, whether due to failing grades, repeated course withdrawals, or financial concerns. It connects students to resources like tutoring, coaching, and peer mentoring programs. It also promotes student engagement, recognizing that a strong sense of belonging is critical for success. First-year transition programs, on-campus housing opportunities, and community-building efforts have been expanded to support this goal.

Course availability has also been a major focus of Navigate U. Many students faced delays in graduation because required courses were either full or not offered frequently enough. The initiative introduced a strategic course scheduling system, using data to predict demand and ensure essential classes are available when students need them. Additionally, the university implemented new guidelines for course enrollment thresholds to spur the scheduling of courses based on historical data and anticipated demand, and identify courses with high demand to consider opening additional sections.

“One of the things with no institutional policy was monitoring thresholds,” says Hagood. “You might be running a class with six students over here, but in another college—or even within the same college—maybe a department head says, ‘No, you have to have at least 15.’ We had no across-the-board guidelines to help deans make the best use of resources and kind of press them to think about it. It wasn’t good for faculty, and it wasn’t good for students.”

The pillars also target academic wellness, engagement, transitions, and financial structures.

Goals and Metrics 

Graduation rates are a particular area targeted for improvement. At present, the six-year rate is around 66% (a previous peak of 70% declined during the COVID-19 pandemic). By addressing obstacles such as course bottlenecks and repetition, outdated policies, and inconsistent advising, the initiative aims to see 80% of students completing their degrees in six years by 2030. 

In tandem with this is the goal to increase the rate of retention. Currently, about 85% of first-year students return for their second year. With enhanced advising, course availability, and academic support, the university aims to raise this to 90% or higher, aligning with top public research institutions. 

The goals extend beyond graduation. With an improved focus on career readiness and job placement, Utah seeks to ensure that 90% or more of graduates secure employment or enroll in graduate school within six months of completing their degree. This effort includes strengthening connections between academic programs and career services, expanding internship opportunities, and incorporating career development into students’ academic experiences.

In tracking these key metrics and continuously refining its strategies, Navigate U intends to create a more efficient, supportive, and results-driven approach to student success. And with a new kind of tracking under development, the school hopes to gain a clearer picture of each student’s academic journey in order to provide targeted assistance before small setbacks become major obstacles.

The enhanced tracking aims to put more points of data into profiles to build a more comprehensive picture of the student life cycle: where they’re going, and where they’re not. 

“The next phase is working out how we incorporate swipe data from student affairs and event attendance, and then we can start to see this really interesting profile of the student. Are they using the library? Did they go to a coaching appointment? Did they meet with their advisor? Do they attend sporting events?” says Johnson. “If we start to see some gaps, we can launch some outreach to a student because we’re seeing them not only notengaged in some of these academic support resources, but they’re not engaging in campus life and wellness and belonging-fostering activities and events.” 

If a student had been missing class, for example, administrators could use their swipe history in the residence halls, dining halls, and gyms to get a picture of where they’re spending their time. And if they see the student is spending a lot of time swiping into the Student Union, they can send a coach, advisor, or mentor to informally reach out to them there. 

“The more we know about our students and how best to support them, the better it is for the student,” says Johnson. “I would love a day when we can create a spider web profile like you see on some of those career and personality assessments with different indicators and quadrants. You can see if it’s low or heavy in one area, then we can act on the areas that need to be filled in.”  

Johnson believes one of the greatest behind-the-scenes benefits of the Navigate U work might be the introspective thinking it encourages in faculty and administrators. It’s hard to look at a longstanding practice with fresh eyes if it isn’t considered broken. But that, he says, is where the work happens. 

“With some honest conversation, sometimes we come to see that something probably isn’t in the best interest of students after all. Instead of asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’—because there’s usually some answer for why—we try asking, ‘Do we really need to keep doing this? Is it something that’s benefitting us or the students?’” says Johnson. “Those questions are happening more often. And I think we’re fixing a lot of things.”

Bucknell University President John Bravman personifies the saying “the harder you work, the luckier you are” and imparts that message to his students. With humility and humor, the career academic brings us through the key milestones in his life, from working to overcome a speech impediment as a child to being the “smart kid” in New York City public schools to his spectacular, yet uneven, success at Stanford, where he learned to be a great teacher well before he became a college president.    

Here is an excerpt from our interview:  

LW: To start, can you give a bit of background about yourself, your family, how you grew up, your education? From what I understand already, you have a very interesting story.

Bravman: Well, I doubt I do. But I grew up in New York City 67 years ago. I’m a first generation college student—second generation American but first in my family to go away to college. So my father was in World War II, and I grew up with parents from the postwar era, and I came of age in the early sixties. My earliest distinct memory is probably Kennedy being assassinated. So that’s the place in time. And everything that happened in the sixties influenced me somehow, some way. I had a love of science. My father was an accountant, but he liked science, too, and I probably picked it up from him. But things like going to the World’s Fair in ’64 and ’65 and going to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, these were all big deals for me. And sure enough, I became a scientist.

LW: Where in the city were you educated?

Bravman: P.S. 34 Queens. Then I moved to Long Island for junior high and high school and went to public schools there, too. But it was quite a culture shock, moving from the city to the suburbs. It was just different. I’m sure there’s a lot of sociology and psychology and history and economics to explain why. We were not a wealthy family by any means, but we were never hungry. And for whatever reason, I grew up with the notion that smarter is better—that it’s good to be smart and work hard and all that kind of stuff. And probably, because I moved during those preteen-teenage years, when I went out to Long Island, it was all of a sudden, “Who’s better looking? Who has nicer clothes? Who’s more popular?” This was not a wealthy place, but just all of a sudden, it changed. I remember thinking about that but realizing, of course, that smart still mattered, and I had to do well in school and all that. But that was the first big cultural shock I experienced in my life.

LW: When you say being smart matters, and you saw that as a pathway to success, would you say your peers in the NYC public schools seemed to share that perspective more so than those in Long Island, who seemed more socially-oriented?

Bravman: Probably not. But my honest answer is that, from kindergarten through fifth grade, it felt like the extent to which you were looked up to by your peers came down to who is the smartest kid in class. And that felt very different on Long Island.

But I mean, I spent seven years on Long Island at three different schools, all public. And then I had the incredible good fortune of going to Stanford, where I ended up spending 35 continuous years. Believe it or not, I’ve often said that one of the best things that ever happened to me was a rejection. And I’ve reflected on that rejection throughout my life. I desperately wanted to go to MIT from high school because I’m a sciencey, nerdy geek. And that’s what you did if you grew up on the east coast. That’s where I could be the best of the best. Everyone knows MIT. And if you’re on the west coast, you went to Caltech.

But the story there is that a friend of mine in high school, who was also a nerdy kid, took a family vacation to California the summer after our junior year in high school. He came back with tales of these redwood trees, which I’d only seen in National Geographic, and the Pacific Ocean in Monterey Bay. I’d never been west of Pennsylvania. He told me about a school I’d never heard of called Stanford University, and he said, “We have to go there. It’s amazing.”

And of course, there was no internet back then. So I went down to the high school library, where we had a room forcollege books, and it turns out the Stanford Viewbook was missing. So I didn’t even see pictures of Stanford. All they had was their course catalog, which back then was just text. I illegally took that book home for the night because you’re supposed to leave them there. And I went through it, and I was so entranced by this book with no pictures that I designed my whole curriculum only to find out later that what I thought I was going to take were all junior-level classes, not freshman classes. Long story short, I did not get into MIT, but I got into Stanford, and my friend did not get into Stanford, where he really wanted to go. He went to MIT, was miserable, and dropped out.

I’m just saying, I’ll never, ever forget that rejection and the lesson of, “Okay, life knocks you down? You just keep going.”

LW: With that course catalogue, did you recognize the rigor of the courses right away? What attracted you to the curriculum?

Bravman: Well, I love books. Most of the books I own have nothing to do with science and engineering. I’ll have a real problem when I retire because I’ve now collected 5,000 books, and I have no place to put them. So honestly, I think I just liked this course catalog. It was words, and I had never read a course catalog. I remember sitting in my bedroom, reading page after page of these course descriptions. I thought, “This is amazing, and I want to learn all this stuff.” And then I went off to college for 20 years. 

LW: You must have been quite wowed, then, because your friend was not kidding—it is beautiful.

Bravman: Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s like 362 days a year of perfect weather. I’d never been on a plane before. And back then, Stanford had arranged charter planes from several cities on the east coast, so I was on a plane with 250 kids going to Stanford. I showed up on campus, and it was just the most amazing thing. I had a lot of financial aid. It included loans, scholarships, and a work requirement. So I was assigned to work in a kitchen. I probably picked that off a list. I liked to cook, even as a boy. But I remember we got to campus late, and within minutes of entering my dorm, someone came and told me that I was late for work because as a brand new freshman, I was supposed to work the first day on campus in the kitchen, helping make dinner. So I showed up, and Kay Malik, who was the head of the food service in Wilbur Hall at Stanford, she said, quite curtly, “You’re late for work. Don’t do it again.” So I didn’t exactly have a perfect start.

I loved Stanford. But the fact of the matter is I almost flunked out my sophomore year because I was not prepared for the rigor of the academic work. I quite honestly never really studied in high school because I didn’t have to. I had one B in ninth grade art. So I did not graduate with a perfect 4.0. So I graduated second in my class. My friend, who went to MIT, was one of six people with a 4.0. So I was technically ranked number seven, but I’ve always liked to say number two.

LW: What was it like to have been close to the smartest in your class in high school and then become average, or maybe even struggling to be average, in college?

Bravman: Well, I’d never met kids who went to private schools before. So I was dealing with that and people who went to Beverly Hills High, which is a public school but a very, very good one, resourced differently than my schools were. I don’t remember too much about that, but I remember being scared and disappointed in myself. I thought, “What am I going to do and what am I going to tell my parents?” And I’m sure kids today feel the same way. And they probably also experience certain emotions I didn’t. So I’ve tried to be a better and more sensitive advisor academically, but also as a boss, understanding that people have a variety of experiences. But I think that near failure was a really important learning lesson for me. And part of that is, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” 

That’s also where I learned about advising. My advisor was an almost brand new professor at Stanford from Great Britain. He went to Cambridge. And so I learned a lot along the way, too, about England as a result of that relationship. But he was helpful and supportive, and I’ve never forgotten that. So obviously I didn’t flunk out, and I did well enough, and I ended up getting into the doctoral program there in engineering. 

When I started the doctoral program, my undergraduate advisor remained my advisor, but I also got a second advisor in electrical engineering, a different department. My department, material science, announced a new faculty search. And I remember saying to my advisor in electrical engineering, “Hey, look, did you see my department’s going to be hiring someone else? I wonder who they’re going to get.” And he looked at me and said, “I want you to apply for it.” I said, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to be a Stanford professor. Give me a break. I almost flunked out.” He said, “No, I want you to apply for it.” And he was an older professor. He’s still with us. He’s 85 and a giant in his field. He was a giant in his field then, and he said, “I want you to stay.”

So that advice and encouragement from two different advisors changed the course of my life. That whole advising experience has meant so much to me ever since because I know what it did for me. I ended up staying there for a total of 35 years before coming here to Bucknell in 2010. I lived off campus one year in graduate school and three years as a young professor. So 31 of 35 years, I lived on campus. And for 14 of those years, I think it is, I lived in an undergraduate dorm as what we call a “resident fellow.” So most of my life, I’ve lived on a college campus. So I went to college 50 years ago next September.

When I say it made my life, I mean, I’m not kidding. And obviously it took a lot of hard work—first to not get kicked out, secondly to get a position in the graduate program, and then to pass my Ph.D. qualifying exam, which I failed the first time and you only can take twice by policy. So I worked my butt off and passed the second time. And then I had to get on faculty, and then I had to earn tenure. And that is not trivial at university, let me tell you. Stanford’s policy is that you have to be one of the two best people in the world at your age in your field. And that’s not possible, really, but that’s the written standard. And of course, Stanford School of Engineering is incredibly famous in my area because of Silicon Valley. So I had the combination of thrills and chills every single day, and getting tenure was probably the achievement of my life until I became president here.

And I just reflect on that—to have gotten there as a first generation college kid, who almost flunked out and then didn’t pass his Ph.D. qualifying exam the first time. And I’m no genius, not even remotely close, but I know the value of working really hard and keeping a dream ahead of you and sacrificing. In my experience, working really hard is no guarantee, but it can make a difference. I’ve tried to be very sensitive to students who are struggling. Maybe they wouldn’t believe a college president almost flunked out of school. But it’s the God’s honest truth, and I want them to know that. And being an advisor doesn’t mean you have to be a pushover. You can be direct and strong without being strident, and you can be understanding of someone’s needs and foibles and weaknesses. And I can’t believe in September, I will have literally been in college for 50 years.

“[As an advisor] you can be direct and strong without being strident, and you can be understanding of someone’s needs and foibles and weaknesses.”

LW: That’s a great milestone. So when you almost failed, who was it that believed in you enough to keep you going?

Bravman: That’s a great question. It’s hard to answer. Obviously, my advisor’s support and some other faculty were important. But I did realize that I’d have to get my stuff together, or my life’s going to be very different.

LW: So you had a strong sense of agency.

Bravman: I was probably more scared shitless than anything else. I really was, and I was afraid of disappointing my parents, for sure. So I was in the process of applying to transfer to a couple schools back east—good but lesser schools—and not even thinking about, “Are they really going to take someone who’s almost flunked out?” Thankfully, I didn’t have to find out, but I learned that you can talk yourself quickly into procrastinating, and it usually doesn’t have a good end. So I learned that lesson painfully and learned that I had to discipline myself to partition the various aspects of life—fun and work and this and that—and to sleep as little as possible to maximize everything else. That’s probably the best answer I can give you, but I was really scared.

LW: Let’s talk about when you were recommended for, and ultimately earned, that coveted teaching position. You hadsomeone who really believed in you. What did that feel like?

Bravman: You know, all the prejudices about research institutions are often true. But this advisor, he was both at the absolute top of his field and the best teacher I ever had. That was a role model for me. And honestly, a lot of getting that job was just dumb luck—right person, right time. And I, in my naivete, just thought, “Gee, I wonder who they’re going to get.” It never entered my mind that I’d be on the Stanford faculty. And he just said, “John, I want you to apply.” And I don’t remember much else, but saying some quip about, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not like you. I can’t be you.” And now I’m one of two people in Stanford’s history to have their highest award for teaching and their highest award for service.

LW: What about the teaching? What do you think, given all you’ve told me, contributed to you being a great teacher?

Bravman: Well, I’ll tell you, I have a story there, too. It’s the same answer: total, utter fear of failure. My brother is older than me. He’s very outgoing. My sister’s younger and very outgoing, and I was the introvert. And my father was a very, very smart man. It’s such a shame he couldn’t go to college. I grew up with a speech impediment, and my father, when I was in second grade, bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder—which I still have and still works—and a microphone. And he made me read into the tape, and he made me listen to myself, which is painful to this day. But he wanted me to learn to overcome my speech impediment. And I never forgot that because I grew up just incredibly fearful of speaking in front of any crowd, all through college. And in part, that’s why I failed my Ph.D. qualifying exam.Because it’s oral the first time. It’s two-and-a-half hours in front of 10 professors. So I was scared out of my mind. Andsome of my speech issues, when you’re scared, they come to the fore. 

Fast forward to teaching, having had lots of not-so-great teachers at Stanford, as well as some great ones, I knew which I wanted to be. So when I started teaching, I probably prepared 10 to 12 hours per one hour lecture. We had, early on, a video camera in our department and a VHS machine. This was pretty advanced at the time. So I remember at midnight when the building was empty, videotaping myself, giving my low-level introductory material science lectures to an empty room on videotape and then watching it until two o’clock in the morning, learning what I did wrong. I was so scared of failure, and I really wanted to be a good teacher. The fact is, I have eight teaching awards,two of them national. So I like telling people who have these issues, honestly, if you knew my fear of talking in public and now I can stand in front of arbitrarily large and loud crowds, anyone can. 

The fact is I’m still a deep introvert. I don’t actually believe in fundamental change that way. You overcome and you adapt. I’m proud of what I did in teaching, and I think I’m a reasonably good public speaker now. I’m not very good at reading a script. But I want students who are struggling, especially with public speaking, but anything really, to know that if I can do this, believe me, you can.

LW: Well, you can’t win all those teaching awards without getting a positive response from the students themselves. They really are the ultimate judges on this. Do you have a sense of what about your teaching has resonated so muchwith students?

Bravman: I became a techno geek in terms of computers, as they arose. So the Macintosh 1984 came out the same year I joined the faculty, and everyone was using IBM PC. Those were released in 1980, but I started with a Mac. I was, for the most part, a bit ahead of my time with new software, new technology, and I took that into the classroom. So I think that was noticed.

I think it helps to be friendly and approachable and tell stories, like, “Hey, here’s my story. If I can do this, you can do this.” And hopefully I gave clear lectures. My department had very few majors. The big undergraduate courses were all kind of service courses. And so people didn’t really want to be in my classroom, but they had to be. And so that’s something to think about. And then at the graduate level, I ended up teaching things that, for the most part, very few people fundamentally like. They just have to do it as a doctoral student. Like crystallography, it’s very dry and not very exciting. So I worked hard at bringing in real life examples that people could relate to that still allowed me to explicate on the subjects. And so it’s those kinds of sensitivities, but also being in my office at midnight. Students would come see me at midnight because that’s more their hours than mine.

Of course, early on, you’re younger, so you’re closer to them. But what’s the lure of academics? Every year, the freshmen are the same age. Every year, I’m exactly one year older. It’s so unfair.

LW: Did you think early on in your career that you’d ever be a college president? Was that a holy grail that you always hoped to achieve?

Bravman: No. My dream job, having grown up in New York City, was to be the president of the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West. The woman who was the president there was president for like 25 years. And I remember thinking, “Would you please just retire?” But seriously, being a college president is a tough job. And it always has been. But I’m who I am, and I’m not who I’m not, and I can only do what I do. So I just keep building as best I can.