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I meet with a variety of prospective students and parents every year from all over the country. With wide, excited eyes they sit in my office expectantly as I ask, “So, what brings you to ҹɫС��Ƶ?” They settle as we connect around their experiences, their interests, and what makes them excited and nervous about college. No matter who it is sitting in front of me, all students preparing for college are ultimately interested in one common thing: Do I have what it takes to manage it all successfully?

I think our perspective on how to answer this question has evolved over time. Despite how we would like to put the COVID pandemic behind us, the reality is that the students who choose to be a part of the storied history of ҹɫС��Ƶ bring new challenges with them each year, based on their experiences as children and young adolescents during a global pandemic. Supporting students with various skills, challenges, and preparation for college has become a moving target that requires a flexible and community-based approach. 

Together with the commandant of cadets, dean of students, colleagues in the Counseling and Wellness Center, and faculty from the Department of Health and Human Performance, we are trying to innovatively yet strategically meet this need in our students by leveraging the academic setting. In the fall of 2022, we piloted the first ever section of Resilient Bodies, a course created to build stress management and resiliency skills in our students. The course was designed to use intentional strategies focused on what people need to be more resilient to stress and how they learn skills and confidence surrounding these topics.

During that first semester, I truly wasn’t sure if the students could understand the impact of spending this 50-minutes per week in the classroom talking about how to be more resilient. It wasn’t until the second time around, during the fall of 2023, that we started to understand that students didn’t just value the course, they appreciated the opportunity to engage in this type of personal growth. Enrollment jumped from 19 students that first year to 75 students during the second year. Now, we offer six sections per semester and have 143 students registered during the fall of 2025. 

In class, we cover a variety of topics including acute and chronic stress management, value systems and goal setting, interpersonal communication and empathy, physical activity, nutrition, sleep, problem solving, motivation, and persistence. Although not all topics feel as important to each student, a powerful part of the class is the focus on skills development, which is often done through small group activities and reflections. Sometimes, those discussions are critical in developing perspectives on how to apply these skills outside of class. Other times, those discussions are serving no other purpose but to build community. And, if I were put on the spot to choose one thing that would predict a ҹɫС��Ƶ student’s ability to manage it all, I would choose community. Belonging is such an important part of integrating effectively into the history of tradition at ҹɫС��Ƶ, and resilience can be built simply through facilitating that sense of belonging.

As we continue to evolve the course and improve the experience and outcomes for students, we maintain focus on flexibility and innovation. We received funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to support continued growth of the course, and this year we are piloting a program where we train faculty and staff from across campus to facilitate different sections of the course. 

This semester, we have faculty from the Departments of Biology, Mathematics, and Health and Human Performance facilitating sections of the course, alongside staff members from the Kreitzberg Library, ҹɫС��Ƶ Archives and Special Selections, Sullivan Museum and History Center, Center for Academic Success and Achievement, and the commandant’s staff. The course materials are standardized, but the perspectives are unique and refreshing. As more faculty and staff engage in the delivery of this material, we see the sense of belonging and support is crossing boundaries. In fact, people from across departments, schools, and programs — students, faculty, staff — are all connecting over what it means to show up for yourself so that you can lead others.

My hope is for this course to be a bridge that continues to connect the ҹɫС��Ƶ community to its greater purpose. These skills, however fundamental, are critical to individual and collective success, and we see that in students who have taken the course. As I sit through convocation each year applauding student award recipients, I’m struck by how many of them took Resilient Bodies as a Rook or a freshman and then continued to find ways to learn, grow, serve, and succeed at ҹɫС��Ƶ. Maybe eventually we can offer a seat to every incoming freshman, building an equitable framework for what it looks like to manage it all successfully.

In the meantime, I tell many excited stories to those prospective students each year. Stories from when I was a civilian student here, and many, many stories from experiences I’ve had on the faculty over the past decade. But, I also share with them that at ҹɫС��Ƶ, we want you to manage it all successfully, and Resilient Bodies is one of the ways we will actively support you in learning how.