Boston College joins Coalition for Transformational Education

Boston College has joined the Coalition for Transformational Education (CTE), a 22-member national association of public and private universities committed to ensuring that that all college students complete their degrees, but more significantly, benefit from life-altering educational experiences that enhance their well-being and work and civic engagement throughout their lives, Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley has announced.

The purpose of the coalition—whose members strive to use data-informed experiments to rework their curricula, and scale the use of project-based experiences to build a sense of belonging and growth mindset for all students—directly hews to BC’s view of formative education as central to the mission of educating students who will use their gifts in the service of others, noted Quigley. 

“BC’s distinctive culture of formation is foundational to and animates the University’s approach to education, particularly our goals of integrating intellectual excellence, religious commitment, and service to wider society, and of remaining faithful to our educational and religious heritage,” he said.  “By joining the coalition, we link with a community of like-minded university leaders dedicated to centering student well-being and lifelong flourishing as their mission.”

According to the CTE website, “every college student should graduate with a sense of identity, belonging, agency and purpose, laying the foundation for a lifetime of well-being, fulfilling relationships, and meaningful work.  To develop identity, students must be encouraged to discover who they are, where they come from, and their place in the world.  To develop agency, they must be encouraged to discover what they can do with what they learn, and to apply their knowledge to authentic problems in the world. And alongside these, to develop a sense of purpose, they must be encouraged to explore what impact they might have on the world.”

Founded in 2019 as the Coalition for Life-Transformative Education, the organization stems from the results of the 2014 Gallup-Purdue Index—the first annual measure of American college graduates' success in their pursuit of great jobs and great lives.  The index examined college experiences such as internships, extracurricular activities involvement, and connections with professors.

The then-president of Olin College, Richard K. Miller, convened a group of 20 higher education leaders in 2017 to consider Gallup’s findings, which centered on an critical factor:  Alumni who reported that during their undergraduate years they encountered someone who “cared about them as a person” and who also had the opportunity to engage in applying what they learned in a real-world context had twice the national average of well-being many years after graduating, as opposed to the impact of grades or academic distinctions. 

The outcome upended the notion that success in life correlated most closely to economic success and/or academic achievement. Even more compelling, the data demonstrated that just a fraction—three percent—of college graduates reported experiencing these positive, formative influences. 

In response, the coalition founders agreed that emotionally supportive mentoring and connecting classroom activities to authentic problems in real life should be priorities for colleges and universities.

CTE membership, Quigley explained, provides networking and collaboration opportunities, access to workshops, and learning communities dedicated to best practices and common goals and challenges; members also can apply for a $25,000 mini-grant to support a coalition-related project. The coalition hosts an annual conference—held this past March in Washington, D.C.—and a leaders’ meeting.

“By collaboration with other member institutions, we look forward to learning new approaches that produce meaningful improvements; we also suspect we have some insights to share that might inspire colleagues on other campuses,” he said. 

Stanton E.F. Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, will serve as BC’s liaison with the coalition. 

“It’s wonderful to see how many peer universities are coming around to the idea that they should deliberately foster the holistic development of young people, including the development of a sense of purpose and commitment to a larger moral order,” said Wortham. “BC has always had this emphasis on whole person formation, and we’re excited to join with other coalition institutions moving in the same direction.”

Other CTE members are Arizona State University, Bates College, Belmont University (Nashville), Bucknell University, University of Connecticut, University of Denver, Embry-Riddle Aeronautic University (Prescott, Ariz.), University of Florida, Georgetown University, Kent State University, University of Maine, MIT, University of Miami, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Ohio Northern University, Olin College of Engineering (Needham, Mass.), Texas Tech, University of Southern California, University of Virginia, Wake Forest University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Wellesley College.