Bucknell University’s Thrive Program fulfills the promise of the university’s strategic plan: to offer students a transformative experience that prepares them to thrive not only at Bucknell, but throughout their lives. The program is organized around four pillars — Meeting Basic Needs, Sense of Belonging, Access and Use of Resources, and Holistic Growth — a framework that generated over 300 university-wide initiatives to enhance the student experience. To date, more than 80% of those initiatives have been completed, including a Thrive Fellows Program, student success coaches, a First Generation Honor Society, a Thrive Course and one-day campus-wide Retreat, a redesigned new student orientation, and a grade forgiveness policy.

Building on the literature of entrepreneurial ecosystem mapping, Bucknell’s Ecosystem of Purpose creates a graphical representation of purpose opportunities on campus, maps the interconnectedness of components in terms of student participation, spaces, time, and resources, and conducts a gap analysis to guide future investment. Distinctively, this mapping is grounded in the student perspective rather than that of administrators. The program also develops Purpose Cards — short exercises used in Community Dialogues and in Bucknell’s Residential College Foundation and Dinner Seminar programs — to actively engage students in exploring their sense of purpose.