February 2026

We are excited to report that:

• Our website has 2,400 views, with 2,161 views in the US since August 1, 2025.

• Newsletter readership has increased slightly since October 2025, from 175 recipients to 186 recipients.

• 13% of readers responded to the survey request.

THANK YOU to everyone who contributed feedback on the newsletter and website. We are glad you are finding these resources and materials useful.

88% report reviewing the newsletter either regularly or occasionally, finding it most useful for keeping up-to-date on what is happening on other campuses (71%), across the working groups (71%), learning from other campuses (67%), and accessing materials to support your work (52%)

79% report the website as a useful tool that you access at least occasionally, finding it most helpful to understand the full scope of the project (81%), learn from ideas and practices on other campuses (63%), access materials and resources to support your work (56%), and keep up-to-date on the project (50%).

We collected a number of suggestions for improvement and will be incorporating those in both the newsletter and on the website over the coming months. However,

The #1 and #2 suggestions were to include more stories from campuses about your work and more student voices. We will be actively working to incorporate these, but …

WE NEED YOUR HELP

Share your exciting and interesting stories, campus spotlights, student engagement stories, best practices, etc. with us through a quick email to ELC@sterlingcollege.edu.

How to Create and Maintain Healthier Boundaries

Thursday, February 19, 2026 | 2:00-3:00 PM ET

The National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (ncfdd) is hosting a free, live webinar designed specifically for faculty who want clearer boundaries and more balance without disengaging from the work they care about.

“Rachel McLaren, PhD, Maurice Stevens, PhD, and Elizabeth Parks, PhD, who will share practical tools drawn from NCFDD’s Faculty Success Program. This session will explore:

• How to identify where your boundaries need strengthening

• Strategies to communicate limits with confidence and care

• Tips for sustaining balance throughout the academic year

Whether you are navigating student demands, committee work, or constant email, this session will help you reset and reclaim your focus.”

Self-Care and Workplace Wellness

Thursday, February 26, 2026 | 11:00-12:00 PM EST

People who incorporate self-care throughout their day are more resilient and better equipped to manage stress, leading to happier and more productive teams. Learn ways to introduce self-care into your work life, communicate boundaries, and cope with demanding schedules in this one-hour seminar with a licensed therapist.

The ELC has partnered with Mindspring Mental Health Alliance to offer free resources to our community. While we will periodically host some synchronous and asynchronous webinars in collaboration with Mindspring. You can find a complete list of their webinars on their website.

My name is Mary Claire. I’m 26 years old and I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina and community building is my jam. I’m a part-time junior and Resident Advisor (RA) at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I serve as the College’s Student Endeavor Fellow bringing a student’s perspective to the Endeavor Project to enhance student and community well-being across a variety of liberal arts campuses.

I hope you enjoy my blogs—reflections on two exciting experiments in community building inspired and funded by the Endeavor Lab College project at St. John’s.

• Creative Portraits in Community Care

• The Murchison Experiment: Tech Fasting and Finding Community at St John’s Santa Fe

Over my time at the College I have noticed that everybody seems to agree that building community is necessary and worth working for; however, it is sometimes difficult to enact creative solutions and to gauge how well our various efforts are affecting a complex problem like community building. It is sometimes easier to reflect on the hazards of our modern predicament and dream of ideals than it is to take action and step forward with confidence that what we are doing, or capable of doing now, is good enough to make some impact and advance our goals. While naming a challenge, analyzing, or ideating can be valuable aspects of solution building, I am, by nature, a do-er, and I will not wait for permission or certainty to begin my attempts at community building.

I’ve been interested in community building for a long time: the ways it works, the ways it fails, and the ways it can be shifted over time. There is nothing I love more than an extravagant gathering of excitable minds consuming or generating together. I find joy in dinner parties, tea parties, dance parties, mending parties, singing parties, painting parties, and work parties. I value labor. All labor, sure, but especially the labor that produces something impactful for me and those that surround me. It’s not a lifestyle for everyone, but I’ll hold it down, unapologetically, in my own sweetly simple and stubborn way.

As part of our Endeavor Fellows work and conversations, we also watched Trevor Noah’s video interview with Dr. Haidt, conducted by Trevor Noah. I was further inspired by Trevor Noah’s recounting of the use of “third spaces” during his childhood. He responds to a call for more third spaces, or free gathering places for people that are other than home or the workplace, by recounting how he and his neighbors blocked off streets. They hosted block parties. Kids played games on the road. Bricks controlled traffic, and there was an unwritten system for letting cars through. The street itself became the space for community to come together, and it wasn’t particularly beautiful or intentionally well designed for that purpose but it was well used.

This is, in part, what I am trying to accomplish—by claiming space and a “really-it’s-not-that-complicated” understanding of how humans interact. This informs my leadership style and has taught me a lot about cleaning up after myself and others and asking for forgiveness. I am inspired by Trevor Noah’s belief that “third spaces” can be claimed without any higher authority than the desire to gather. I try to live this, lead this, and learn—again and again—how to make things happen and ask for forgiveness when I need.

Check Out Danielle’s Story on the UNITY Project at Randolph College

Dr. Danielle M. Currier joined the Randolph faculty in 2011 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2024. Her deep dedication to the students is evident in all of her teaching and academic advising, and in 2015 she won the Gillie A. Larew Distinguished Teaching Award. She is Chair of the Sociology Department and coordinates the Gender Studies and Human Services minors. 

As an interdisciplinary feminist scholar, she focuses her teaching and research on intersectionality, social justice, diversity, equity, and equality. In her courses, students are challenged to examine their assumptions and biases and listen to and hear the perspectives and lived experiences of others, both through course materials and in-depth discussions with their peers. She also works closely with students supervising independent research projects and internships, advising student groups, and acting as a Title IX advisor/advocate. In her research, Dr. Currier focuses on gender, sexuality, rape and sexual violence, and family dynamics and has had publications addressing hookups among college students and feminist pedagogies.

Dr. Currier’s passion for and dedication to student growth and civic responsibility led her to be one of the coordinators of the UNITY Project at Randolph in 2017 and propose, plan, coordinate, and supervise the restaging of the Project in September 2025. This Project mirrors everything to which Dr. Currier has dedicated her teaching and research, and she is excited that the Project will be one of her enduring contributions to the Randolph and Lynchburg communities.

If you know someone or a program at your institution that you would like to be highlighted, please contact ELC@sterlingcollege.edu. 

Working groups are back up and running for the term. You can follow this work for all groups through the “real time” meeting notes housed in the Knowledge Base. (File Name: Team Notes & Documentation)

The Curriculum working group is nearly finished with a  formal articulation of the intersection of mental health well-being, belonging, purpose, and the liberal arts. This document will serve as a framing document for cross institutional curricular and co-curricular discussion on enhancing mental well-being and students' success in the Spring term and inform a curriculum mapping exercise on each campus. Over the coming months they will engage academic affairs and other faculty on their campuses in these discussions. The Curriculum working group meets on alternating Wednesdays, 10-11 AM ET.

The Community Care and Community Resilience (CC&CR) working group is developing a collaborative CC&CR toolkit and roadmap to support the integration of community care work. As part of this work, they are sharing resources, developing toolkits for introduction in orientation, and exploring a partnership with the JED Foundation to support a systems assessment and enhanced policy support across the ELC campuses. The group continues to meet biweekly on Tuesdays from 1–2 PM ET.

The Purposeful Life and Work group has made meaningful progress aligning efforts across the Career and Life Readiness and Tools and Resources Committees and begun construction of the Virtual Center for Purposeful Life and Work. This will serve as a collaborative resource, supporting students in the pursuit of meaningful work and life. Across the Spring term, they are focused on developing collaborative resources and access to tools and materials to support students in their journey. The Purposeful Life and Work group meets alternating Thursdays, 11-12 PM ET.

This month, Mapping Belonging is fully engaged in the workshopping and production of their maps. These maps demonstrate an exciting mix of modalities and styles that reflect the unique social, cultural, and ecological contexts of the ELC campuses. The groups continue to learn from each other and seek to identify shared resources, artists, print companies, and tools to assist with continued project development over the Spring term. Additionally, the group continues to explore opportunities to weave Mapping Belonging more intentionally into other areas of well-being work across each campuses’ Endeavor initiatives. The Mapping Belonging Work group meets alternating Mondays, 1-2 PM ET.

The Nature Rx working group continues to share members’ and institutional expertise around physical, natural, and creative practices to support student and community mental health and wellness. Sharing biweekly knowledge nuggets with each other they seek to share resources and co-develop elements for program development. Individual schools are transitioning into creating spaces and programming that can foster connections among our students and develop new shared opportunities among our collaborative. The Nature Rx working group meets alternating Tuesdays, 2-3 PM ET.

Our group of Student Fellows are deeply immersed in the discussions and actions around the impact of technology and AI across their campuses. They have been critically exploring Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and resources on the impact of technology, particularly overuse of phones, addictive apps, and social media on student well-being. They are actively considering the collaborative project they would like to develop or share across campuses related to this work. Stay tuned!

Sign up for access to the Endeavor Lab Colleges’ Knowledge Base - a searchable database of shared resources from colleagues across the collaborative open to any employee of the Endeavor Lab Colleges. Resources include:

• teaching and learning

• wellness and affinity group activities

• Nature Rx, Purposeful Life and Work, and Community Care resources

• Mapping Belonging (exemplars from June 2025)

• professional development webinars and materials, and

• impact and assessment reports and resources

• More materials are added regularly.

Sign-up with your college email address and a link will be shared with you to access the member-only site. When you create your log-in information, bookmark the link for future access. You can reset your password at any time without needing to request access again.

Join the ELC Wellness Movement!

Invite Colleagues to Subscribe to the Newsletter.

Highlight your campus in a Blog or News story shared with ELC@sterlingcollege.edu

Join the Knowledge Base and Share Resources with others in the Collaborative.

Connect with your campus liaisons or the Project Director.

Support the work on your campus!