The LearningWell Coalition is proud to welcome the College of Charleston as its newest member. Charleston joins through Design Your Charleston, an integrated First-Year Experience and Life Design initiative that equips students to approach college and life with curiosity, agency, connection, and purpose.

The College of Charleston has long been committed to the development of the whole student, investing in both a robust First-Year Experience and a campus-wide Life Design initiative that together help students cultivate identity, belonging, resilience, and the capacity to navigate uncertainty with intention. Design Your Charleston brings these two efforts together in a single, purposefully designed curricular experience: FYSS 101, a redesigned peer-facilitated synthesis seminar linked to faculty-taught First-Year Experience courses and reaching most of the College’s incoming students from the very start of their college journey.

The seminar organizes the semester around five Life Design mindsets (Be Curious, Radically Collaborate, Take Action, Reframe, and Be Mindful), giving students a shared language for navigating challenges, building relationships, and making intentional choices. Through structured reflection, small experiments, peer connection, and hands-on coaching, students create a cumulative Cougar Pounce Plan portfolio that documents what they are learning about themselves, the community they are building, and the actions they will take next. Trained undergraduate Peer Facilitators lead each section, supported by Life Design coaches who provide a familiar point of continued connection beyond the seminar, normalizing help-seeking and extending the work of the first year across the undergraduate experience.

The initiative launched in a pilot in Fall 2026 with approximately 2,200 incoming first-year students, building on published research that demonstrated significant improvements in participants’ hope for the future and goal-setting capacity. Assessment combines pre/post surveys, drawing on validated instruments including the Claremont Purpose Scale and Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale. These assessments use rubric-based evaluation of student portfolio artifacts, measuring growth in self-awareness, belonging, agency, reflection, and purpose. Findings will drive annual curriculum revision and be shared broadly with the Coalition community and the wider higher education field.

“Design Your Charleston advances our strategic commitment to ensuring that every student has the support, mentorship, and experiences they need to flourish,” said Suzanne Austin, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of the College of Charleston. “By integrating Life Design into the College’s First-Year Experience, this project will help students connect academic learning with belonging, agency, wellbeing, and purpose — leading them to approach their education with curiosity, intentionality, and confidence from the beginning of their college journey.”

As a member of the LearningWell Coalition, the College of Charleston will both contribute to and benefit from a national network of institutions advancing evidence-based, learner-centered approaches that prepare students to flourish in work and in life.

“We are thrilled to welcome the College of Charleston into the Coalition,” said Angela Lindner, Executive Director of the LearningWell Coalition. “Design Your Charleston is a compelling model for how institutions can weave flourishing directly into the academic fabric of the first year — reaching students not as a supplement to their education, but as a foundational part of it. The College’s commitment to scaling and sharing this work makes them a tremendous addition to our community.”

About the LearningWell Coalition

The LearningWell Coalition is a national network of colleges and universities committed to advancing higher education to ensure every student is prepared to flourish in work and in life. Through research, collaboration, and the sharing of best practices, the Coalition advances approaches that foster lifelong wellbeing, purpose, and engagement.

About the College of Charleston
 The College of Charleston is a nationally recognized public liberal arts and sciences university located in historic Charleston, South Carolina. Through its First-Year Experience Program and Life Design Center, the College is committed to preparing students not only to earn a degree, but to build purposeful, flourishing lives. Design Your Charleston represents the College’s most intentional effort yet to bring those commitments together at scale, reaching most incoming students with an integrated experience grounded in reflection, community, and the mindsets students need to thrive.