September 2026

We are excited to launch our new academic year and the September 2026 edition of the ELC Newsletter. This Newsletter is delivered to your inbox the second full Thursday of the month.

It has been a very busy summer, and we are confident you will see the fruits of that labor now and over the coming year.

This summer we:

• Look for new editions and formatting on the Our Story page.

• Check out updates to the Initiatives page, including connecting specific initiatives with examples from the Praxis page to demonstrate how these initiatives are coming to life on your campuses.

• Explore the redesigned ELC Knowledge Base. We brought it in-house as a separate member only site on the ELC website. We expect you will find this redesign more accessible, searchable, and user friendly. We look forward to your feedback. More on that later!

• The Purposeful Life and Work team continued their work over the summer to ensure the BETA launch of the new Virtual Center for Purposeful Life & Work. This site is currently being tested by the Purposeful Life and Work Team.

• The Community Care and Community Resilience Working Group met over the summer, completing Community Resilience Model training and integrating that work into Resident Advisor training and orientation at select colleges across the ELC.

• Four new institutions have joined the Life Atlas pilot, bringing us to six institutions engaged for this year. Life Atlas is a suite of online tools that assist students in discovering their natural talents, developing a sense of purpose and direction, and aligning these gifts and passions with careers.

• Approximately 25 colleagues across the ELC member institutions have submitted seven separate cross-institutional conference presentation proposals over the summer. We are awaiting acceptance deadlines to learn more about where we will be presenting this great work.

• We're excited to announce that the Endeavor Lab Colleges now has a shared Leader Organizational Membership through the Association for Experiential Education, and faculty/staff from all ELC Colleges are welcome to sign up for free. The Association is excited to support the work of the ELC through this membership and invites you to explore member benefits and share your work through their webinars, conferences, and newsletter to increase the visibility of the ELC and our member institutions. Click HERE for more information on signing up and accessing benefits.

• Matt Vosler, Daniel Lanctot, Grant Kittrell, and Lori Collins-Hall will be presenting a workshop, “The Wellbeing Crunch: A Collaborative Approach to Address Student Flourishing Through Nature and Art”, at the Association for Experiential Education Conference this November 12-14 in Estes Park, CO.

• Continued cross campus implementation and integration of initiatives;

• Sustainability planning across institutions;

• Raising the visibility of the Endeavor Lab Colleges and our amazing institutions through presentations, webinars, and other outreach opportunities, and

• Measuring impact.

We look forward to sharing this and much more with you over the coming year.

Career Services & AI
Tuesday, September 22,  2026 | 2:00-3:15 PM ET

Practical Tools to Build Staff Confidence and
Effectively Support Student Employability

Learn more about the webinar

Free to all ELC members who register with the link below. By registering you will also receive access to an on-demand copy after the session.

Student Loneliness
Friday, September 25, 2026 | 11:00-12:15 PM ET

Move Beyond Campus Programming to Create Meaningful Connections That Improve Student Success

Learn more about the webinar

Free to all ELC members who register with the link below. By registering you will also receive access to an on-demand copy after the session.

Difficult Conversation 

Monday, September 28, 2026 | 2:00-3:30 PM ET

Teach Students Skills for Meaningful Dialogue

Learn More about the Webinar

Free to all ELC members who register with the link below. By registering you will also receive access to an on-demand copy after the session.

Endeavor Presidential Fellows Gathering & 

Endeavor Student Leadership Retreat

The ELC’s Annual Presidential Fellows Meeting

October 5-8, 2026

Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA

Check out Randolph’s Wildcat Wellness Praxis post.

Randolph College offers a window into a campus culture where community care is not just an administrative goal, but a lived, daily practice. From their expanding network of 24/7 Resource Stations—which bring essential wellness supplies and connection directly into the spaces students already inhabit—to deeply integrated institutional programs, Randolph exemplifies what it means to cultivate a holistic ecosystem of well-being, belonging, and resilience.

What makes Randolph’s model so compelling is how seamlessly wellness is woven across academic, residential, and co-curricular life. Through academic innovations like the Contemplative Studies interdisciplinary minor, students are encouraged to pair rigorous scholarly inquiry with mindfulness, self-care, and reflective practice. This academic framework is anchored by vibrant peer-driven leadership on the ground. The student-led WildCat Wellness Council (WCWC) serves as an engine for peer advocacy, empowering students to design and deliver health education tailored directly to their peers' physical, mental, and emotional needs.

This commitment to human-centered connection begins the moment students set foot on campus. Initiatives like the UNITY project and intentionally designed orientation activities establish a shared foundation of belonging and inclusivity from day one. Across campus, physical and social infrastructure continues to evolve through dedicated Randolph Thrive resources and spaces that offer quiet respite, connection, and creative endeavors. Students are further connected to and inspired to navigate their path well-being, belonging, and campus community through the Key & Compass mapping project (in progress) which invites students and community to actively examine, explore, and claim their place in this ecosystem of well-being.

By pairing low-barrier daily support with academic depth and student advocacy, Randolph College provides an inspiring blueprint for small liberal arts institutions. Their work demonstrates that when community care is intentionally embedded into existing campus structures, student well-being and academic success naturally flourish together. We encourage you to check out Randolph’s praxis post along with other institution’s examples of Praxis to explore how these principles of whole-person education can inspire practical action across our shared community.

While some groups continued their work over the summer, all 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.

The Curriculum Working Group opened the 2026–2027 academic year with a clear roadmap focused on completing campus-wide curriculum mapping by December 2026 and co-designing shared teaching resources. This year’s collaborative initiatives include attention to documenting pedagogy best practices, developing Faculty Inquiry Groups, and creating shared resources and toolkit modules to faculty on-boarding and a new faculty orientation integrating well-being, belonging and purpose. Campus teams continue to integrate well-being and intergroup dialogue into course offerings and governance, while evaluating data quality and gap analysis. The group submitted a number of conference proposals to present at AAC&U CLASS (Conference on Learning and Student Success). ELC is also providing conference funding for faculty and staff presenting on ELC-aligned and inspired work. For more information reach out to the Project Director, Lori Collins-Hall, at lcollinshall@randolphcollege.edu.The Curriculum working group meets on alternating Thursdays, 4:15-5:15 ET.

The Community Care and Community Resilience (CC&CR) working group enters AY26–27 focused on rolling out Community Resilience Model (CRM) training, delivering the Peer Educator curriculum to Student Fellows, and developing framework assessment strategies across campuses. A new suite of six short CRM videos and activity guides—created with the support of the Human Values Center—is now available for flexible integration into First-Year Experience (FYE) programs, Orientation, and Community Conversations. Member campuses have also initiated Peer Educator training using NASPA frameworks, with additional training support funded by ELC. The group continues to meet biweekly on Tuesdays from 1–2 PM ET.

The Purposeful Life and Work enters AY26–27 focused on expanding consortium-wide access to occupational wellness tools and evaluating utilization of the Virtual Center for Purposeful Life and Work. This platform curates shared resources across the ELC institutions, making accessible a broader array of career and life readiness resources to all ELC institutions. Priorities for the year include scaling the Life Atlas pilot, integrating the new platform across campuses, and building customizable launch kits to support campus faculty and advisors ahead of Spring training sessions. The Purposeful Life and Work group meets alternating Thursdays, 11-12 PM ET.

This Mapping Belonging Working Group is expanding place-based learning initiatives and building student understanding and connection to their campus community, across member campuses using story maps, botanical and trail guides, and augmented reality tools to cultivate connection and community. Focus areas for AY26–27 include deepening campus partnerships, refining assessment strategies, and building out toolkits, summary guides, and white papers to be housed in the ELC Knowledge Base and shared in conference and webinar settings. The Mapping Belonging Work group meets alternating Mondays, 1-2 PM ET.

The Nature Rx working group has changed its name to better reflect its expanding scope. Entering Implementation Year 2 Nature Rx and Embodied Practices working group is expanding nature-, creative-, and contemplative-based programming across ELC campuses. Key initiatives for AY26–27 include scaling campus-level initiatives (such as Art Rx, campus gardening, and woodworking programs), establishing student-led peer support networks, and creating shared student leader toolkits. Campus teams are also gathering participation and impact data while expanding partnerships with broader organizations like the Campus Nature Rx Network and the Association for Experiential Education. The Nature Rx working group meets alternating Tuesdays, 2-3 PM ET.

This year we are welcoming back some of our Endeavor Presidential Student Fellows and meeting some new ones. The Fellows met together for the first time this year on Tuesday, September 8. They look forward to getting to know each other better, attend the first annual Endeavor Presidential Fellows Leadership Conference, October 6-8, at Randolph College, and working together–over the year–to support the integration of well-being, belonging and purposes across our campuses. Stay tuned!

In December we asked you for feedback and heard you loud and clear: “We like it!” and “We use the resources”, BUT “It is not really accessible” or “user friendly”.

CHECK OUT THE NEW KNOWLEDGE BASE AT
https://www.endeavorlabcolleges.org/

Click Knowledge Base in the navigation bar, set up an email account, and EXPLORE!

* Please NOTE: Even if you had access to the previous knowledge base, you need to reestablish an ELC account here to gain access to this new member site.

As an early adopter, we would like you to
take five minutes to
SHARE Your Feedback.

Join the ELC Wellness Movement!

Invite Colleagues to Subscribe to the Newsletter

Highlight the great work of your campus in a Praxis post 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!