Academic Flourishing Initiative
- Human Flourishing Program Team
- 10 hours ago
- 5 min read
Participate in the Academic Flourishing Initiative
Colleges and universities put forward grand aspirations through their mission and vision statements. The founding mission of Stanford University is “to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization.” Harvard College places social leadership at the center of its aim stating that its mission is “to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society.” These kinds of aspirations are noble, but leaders of these institutions can substantially improve progress toward the goals described in their mission statements through proper measurement and management.
In 2025, The Human Flourishing Program introduced a 24-item student formation assessment designed to survey university students and evaluate their experience of university life as it relates to academic flourishing, to supplement more general flourishing assessments, and to more adequately evaluate progress towards the aspirations put forward by colleges and universities. The student formation assessment evaluates student perceptions of the university's contribution to their own growth in wisdom, leadership, critical thinking, capacity to positively change the world, or to work across differences. The hope of the academic flourishing assessment is to help measure progress toward what is often present in college and universities vision and mission statements, which typically aspire to transform students into intellectually capable and virtuous leaders of society.
Pursuant to that goal, the Human Flourishing Program has launched the Academic Flourishing Initiative to catalyze a movement of colleges and universities dedicated to flourishing. The Initiative has three distinct goals:
Carry out new research on academic flourishing
Improve university leaders' ability to influence and promote student flourishing
Advance a community of practice in higher education oriented toward human flourishing
The initiative is a member-sponsored research collaborative in which colleges and universities participate in the collaborative by conducting campus-wide research on student flourishing using the student formation survey and other flourishing assessments on their campuses.
The data collected on these various items will help college and university leaders understand what is and what is not going well at their institutions and what improvements might be made, and will hopefully eventually lead to significant research concerning university life on the factors that may influence flourishing in educational environments. Early insights are already emerging as the Human Flourishing Program conducted campus wide research at UNC Chapel Hill in 2024 and a subset of the student formation assessment was included in the Wall Street Journal's 2025 Survey of U.S. Colleges and Universities. We have reported some of the initial results of this work in a Harvard Crimson op-ed, and the work was also recently covered by LearningWell and Inside Higher Ed and in our own write-up in Psychology Today.
Members of the Academic Flourishing Initiative will gain unique research insights and access to conferences, webinars, events, and research tools produced by the Human Flourishing Program on these topics. More information is available in our academic flourishing brochure and brief two-page description. More details on the theoretical motivation for this work is given in:
VanderWeele, T.J., & Case, B. (2025). Academic flourishing and student formation. International Journal of Wellbeing, 15(2), 5003, 1-29.
See also recent coverage in Inside Higher Ed and LearningWell. We invite colleges and universities throughout the world to join us.
See also our Flourishing Schools Project for work on the promotion of flourishing in K-12 education.
FAQ
What makes the Academic Flourishing Initiative unique?
The Academic Flourishing Initiative was conceived with one clear purpose: to give colleges and universities data that could help them guide their students and campuses toward greater flourishing and student formation. Our goal is to provide research that cuts through the noise and removes guesswork around the elusive concepts that are valued in principle – but too often neglected in practice – by institutions of higher learning.
What exactly is the Flourishing Data Collaborative?
The Flourishing Data Collaborative is the central data collection and research production engine at the Human Flourishing Program. It is a research consortium made up of participating members that support ongoing research into academic flourishing in a genuine community of practice.
What is the cost?
The cost to participate as a member for the 2025-2026 academic year in the Data Collaborative is $10,000 per institution.
What do members get?
Members will receive a link to the Academic Flourishing Survey, hosted by HFH, for use in on-campus data collection. HFH will receive and analyze those data, and will return a research report to campus leadership that provides a summary of the findings (with scores broken down by student year and along demographic lines), guides to interpretation, and benchmarking for some indicators against norms at other institutions. Membership in the Data Collective also includes the right to publish the results of the report for any non-commercial purpose. Members also receive invitations to exclusive conferences and events and access to resources published within the Data Collaborative community.
Can institutions pre-pay for multiple years of membership in the collaborative?
Yes, because colleges and universities may prefer to see the impact of their work on the lifecycle of a student from matriculation to graduation, membership can be renewed annually or pre-established for multiple years.
When does data collection happen?
Data collection will take place spring of 2026 so that freshman students will have had at least one semester of college life. The Data Collaborative will provide guidance on strategies for maximizing response rates.
Can graduate and professional schools participate in the Data Collaborative?
Yes, the initiative encompasses institutions at the graduate level. Membership in the Data Collaborative is at the school-wide level, thus sub-units such as concentrations, cohorts, or career tracks will not be eligible. Please write to us to inquire about cost of membership for graduate and professional schools in the collaborative.
What data is being used and shared?
All survey responses collected from the Academic Flourishing Survey are deidentified and anonymous. The Flourishing Data Collaborative houses a database that compiles data collected from participating members. The program retains the right to publish deidentified analyses and research from data in the collective dataset. More information about data use and security can be found in the data use agreement.
Where can I find the data use agreement?
You can download a copy of the data use agreement under the "resources" tab on this page. It is provided during the registration process for the Data Collaborative and you can also write to academicflourishing@fas.harvard.edu
Can I participate in this work if I am not part of an institution in the collaborative?
Yes, individuals, scholars, and professors at universities who are interested in this work can participate by referring university leaders to the Data Collaborative, requesting invitations to events, working with Human Flourishing Program staff on publication and dissemination efforts, and writing about the results of our work.
Upcoming Events
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Resources
Academic Flourishing Brochure from the Human Flourishing Program.
