Our Story
For nearly a decade, Endeavor Foundation has engaged in deep conversation with small liberal arts colleges, listening closely to our shared challenges and supporting individual campus initiatives with generosity and vision. As pressures on our institutions have intensified, particularly in the years surrounding and post pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that our individual and isolated efforts are no longer sufficient. Students are facing mounting mental health challenges, a growing sense of disconnection, and uncertainty about their place in a rapidly changing world. These realities are not only impacting individual well-being, but undercut the very heart of our educational mission.
“In the face of this growing crisis, we recognize that collaboration – not competition – is our greatest strength. Together, we imagine a new model: one that would reframe student and community well-being not as an ancillary service, but as central to the liberal arts experience.”
That vision gave rise to the Endeavor Lab Colleges (ELC) Collaborative, a collective of small residential liberal arts colleges from across the nation, formally launched in November 2023. With generous five-year support from Endeavor Foundation, this collaborative brings together faculty, staff, and administrators from some of the nation’s smallest liberal arts institutions to address what former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy (March 5, 2021 – January 20, 2025) has called "the defining health crisis of our time": the mental health and well-being of young people.
A liberal arts education asks us to think about the ways our lives are integrated into and impacted by the larger world. The ELC Collaborative was initially granted $3,275,000 from Endeavor Foundation (2023-2025), directed by Dr. Lori Collins-Hall and overseen by a rotating executive committee of ELC presidents. This grant – Enhancing Student Learning and Experience through Campus Wellness, Student Well-Being and Mental Health Initiative – allowed the Collaborative to develop and pilot initiatives that shift campus response from almost exclusive reliance on clinical and crisis-driven approaches to more proactive, holistic models that infuse belonging, well-being, community care and purpose into the fabric of campus life and the broader context of the liberal arts.
In summer 2025, Endeavor awarded the ELC a second grant, Enhancing Student Learning through Belonging, Well-Being and Purpose: A Vision for Whole Person Education in the Liberal Arts, in the amount of $5,220,545 to continue this important work and embed the most promising models from the first phase of the work into the fabric of our institutions and educational missions, allowing our students and communities to flourish. This continued funding allows the ELC Collaborative an additional three-and-a-half years to focus on embedding and operationalizing the initiatives, transforming institutional culture, deepening individual and cross-campus collaboration and partnerships, conducting on-going assessment, and building a sustainable infrastructure for the Collaborative.
We're excited to work across this collaborative that understands the essential role colleges play in students’ lives. Our goal is to identify and implement strategies that support well-being in ways that are holistic and sustainable. In so doing, we aspire not simply to improve mental health outcomes but to transform the way liberal arts colleges engage students in caring, resilient, mission-aligned communities.
Together, we are forging a new framework, rooted in the values of the liberal arts, to meet the moment and shape a more compassionate, connected future for the liberal arts and our communities.
