OBJECTIVE:Evaluate student effects of participating in an undergraduate academic course, Art and Science of Human Flourishing, that was offered in a synchronous, virtual format during the Fall 2020 semester at three universities. PARTICIPANTS:Three combined cohorts of undergraduate students from three universities (n = 168). METHODS:A pre/post/5-month follow-up, propensity-score matched evaluation was conducted. Measures assessed attention skills, social-emotional skills, flourishing, depressive symptoms, and sleep quality. RESULTS:Relative to comparisons, students in the course reported significant improvements in proximal outcomes related to mindfulness, compassion, and common humanity, as well as decreases in depressive symptoms. Improvements in distal outcomes of flourishing and depressive symptoms were significant at post-course but did not maintain significance at five-month follow-up. CONCLUSIONS:The academic study of human flourishing and contemplative education offers a promising and unique approach to supporting undergraduate mental health and well-being, even in virtual settings.

This book offers a roadmap for developing, growing, and sustaining living-learning communities (LLCs) that promote student success and enhance the undergraduate experience. Drawing on the Best Practices Model presented in Living-Learning Communities That Work, as well as updated research and rich, real-life examples from LLC administrators, the authors offer a revised and improved model for effective LLC practice. Nuanced typologies guide stakeholders in developing and growing their own programs, from the foundational, to the intermediate, and to the advanced level. This text features an extended section on the assessment of LLCs, complete with a logic model for integrating program assessment with student learning outcomes, and concludes with lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and a look into the future of LLCs in higher education. At a time when colleges and universities struggle to create community for students, this book will be a valuable resource to practitioners, researchers, and institutional leaders to more effectively allocate resources to create and sustain LLCs and to realize the potential of these communities to improve undergraduate education. For more information about ACUHO-I membership, events, and resources, please visit acuho-i.org.

This cohort study examines the association of a college course designed to strengthen skills for mental health taken in 2018 or 2019 with measures of anxiety, depression, and flourishing during the early months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020.

The present study explored prospective links between trait mindfulness and compassion on subsequent coping and compliance with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines and indirect effects via well-being and internalized distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included N = 736 US college students who participated in a three-wave longitudinal study across a single academic year. The first two assessment waves took place in 2018 and 2019, respectively, while the third wave took place in May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed self-report measures of trait mindfulness, compassion, well-being, internalized distress, coping, and compliance with CDC health guidelines. Results of a series of autoregressive, cross-lagged panel models revealed that trait mindfulness was associated with better coping via indirect effects of greater well-being and lower internalized distress. Greater compassion was linked with greater adherence to CDC guidelines. Findings suggest that trait mindfulness and compassion may play a role in college students' coping and compliance during the pandemic.

Objective This study explores whether variability in the implementation of an undergraduate course on human flourishing is differentially associated with student outcomes.Participants 101 students in the “Art and Science of Human Flourishing” course across three large, public, R1 universities in Fall 2018 participated in the study.Methods Formative course data included researcher observations of weekly class pedagogy, students’ weekly meditation practice logs and end-of-course assessments, and pre/post surveys measuring changes in participating students’ outcomes related to flourishing (e.g., attentional skills, social-emotional skills, perspectives on flourishing, mental and physical health).Results Although course pedagogy and student engagement varied across the three universities, students’ outcomes were nonetheless similar.Conclusions Variability in course implementation did not appear to differentially affect students’ outcomes. We tentatively conclude that other institutions interested in offering the flourishing course may make limited adaptations to fit their pedagogical preferences without concern for altering its impact on students.

Data from the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns about pandemic impacts on college student mental health. However, early pandemic phase effects on mental health may be transient and high symptom prevalence rates, while alarming, may reflect a continuation of pre-pandemic trends rather than pandemic effects. We evaluated pandemic impacts on mental health in Fall 2020 as well as the relationship between social and health behaviors and mental health during this phase of the pandemic. In a cross-sectional cohort design, we used multivariable regression analyses to compare college student levels of anxiety, depression, well-being, and search for meaning in life before (2018 n=466; 2019 n=459) and during the pandemic (2020, n=563; N=1488; i.e., pandemic cohort). We used Pearson correlation matrices and multivariable regression to examine the relationship between social and health behaviors with pandemic mental health outcomes. Finally, we plot trajectories of change in our data as an extension of published long-term trends (2007-2017) in college student anxiety, depression, and well-being to descriptively examine whether the pandemic appears to have accelerated pre-pandemic trends in deteriorating college student mental health. Levels of anxiety, depression, and well-being did not significantly differ in the 2019 pre-pandemic and pandemic cohorts (Ps>.05). The pandemic cohort reported significantly higher search for meaning in life (P=.014, Cohen’s d=0.15), a predictor of later depressive symptoms. In the pandemic cohort, more frequent in-person social interactions were associated with lower anxiety (r =-0.17, P<.001) and depressive symptoms (r =-0.12, P<.01), and higher well-being (r =-0.16, P<.001). Social videoconferencing was associated with higher well-being (r =0.11, P<.05), but only in-person social interactions explained unique variance in well-being when modeled together. In-person social interactions were also associated with less handwashing (r =-0.11, P<.05) and face mask wearing (r =-0.12, P<.01). Plotting our data as an extension of published longitudinal trends in college student mental health did not reveal evidence for pandemic-specific accelerations in worsening college student mental health. Across the three universities sampled in this study, we find little evidence for deleterious pandemic-specific impacts on college student mental health. Instead, our data appears consistent with a decades long trend in worsening college student mental health. During the pandemic, college students may behave in ways that increase the risk of infection (e.g., in-person social interactions and less facemask wearing) but are associated with improved mental health and well-being. Although we find little evidence for pronounced pandemic effects on mental on college student mental health, prevalence rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms are alarmingly high, highlighting the need to attend to college student mental health and well-being. not applicable