The Mattering Campus
Campuses are uniquely complex communities. Students are navigating one of life's biggest transitions, while faculty and staff are managing growing demands and increasing pressures on their time and attention. Across higher education, leaders are confronting urgent questions about student well-being and faculty and staff burnout and retention.
Drawing on Jennifer’s work with leading universities across the country, Mattering by Design: Campus helps institutions embed mattering in the systems, spaces, and experiences that shape campus life. We strengthen what institutions are already doing—from orientation and advising to classrooms and residential life, faculty and staff culture, leadership practices, and campus traditions—without adding another initiative to a crowded agenda. Everyday interactions and pivotal transitions become opportunities to reinforce a consistent message to students, faculty, and staff: You are valued here, and this community is better because you are part of it.
The Student Experience
In Jennifer’s research, she asked thousands of students a direct question: Do you feel like you matter? For far too many, the answer is no—or only sometimes. They feel like they matter when their GPA is high, when they land the prestigious internship, when their follower count climbs, or when they get into the right fraternity or sorority. But mattering is not something students should have to earn. It cannot depend on achievement, status, or approval.
Mattering by Design: Campus helps students understand what it means to matter, and how they can become agents of mattering in their lives and in the lives of those around them.
Jennifer with Robert D. Ernst, M.D., Chief Health Officer for the University of Michigan
Jennifer with Linda G. Mills, President of New York University (NYU)
Professional Development
Mattering on campus isn't only about students. Faculty and staff are experiencing their own challenges with burnout and disengagement.
When the adults who teach, advise, mentor, and support students are depleted, they have less capacity for the small but critical moments—remembering a name, following up after a hard week, noticing when a student goes quiet—that communicate: I see you. You are important here.
The Mattering by Design: Campus Workshop helps institutions create cultures in which students, faculty, and staff can see how they matter to one another—and how their presence and contributions shape the community around them.
What We Offer
The Diagnostic
We run a benchmarked mattering assessment, built on research into the student and educator experience, that identifies where people feel valued, where they feel able to add value, and where the greatest opportunities to strengthen mattering exist. We walk you through what the results mean: where your community is already strong and where there is opportunity to intentionally design for greater mattering.
The diagnostic can be tailored to the full campus community or a specific population, such as a school, class year, residence hall, faculty group, or staff team. Survey to readout takes approximately 3–4 weeks. We recommend conducting the diagnostic prior to the workshop.
The Workshop
An interactive workshop that puts mattering research and principles into practice in the campus environment.
The Student Experience
This workshop teaches students the key pillars of mattering, and gives them practical tools for strengthening their own sense of mattering and creating it for others. Students learn how to notice people, invest in them, rely on them, communicate their impact, and recognize the ways their own presence and contributions matter to the people and communities around them.
The Faculty & Staff Experience
This experience applies the Mattering by Design framework to the faculty, staff, advisors, and leaders who shape campus life—helping them strengthen their own sense of mattering while learning practical ways to create it for the people they lead, teach, advise, and support.
Both experiences are offered as:
2-hour virtual sessions
4-hour in-person workshops — customizable for orientations, faculty retreats, advising trainings, leadership development, student leadership gatherings, and other campus-wide experiences
A culture of mattering shouldn't depend on a great professor, an exceptional advisor, a thoughtful manager, or one positive encounter. It can be built into the campus ecosystem by design.
Consulting
Jennifer takes on a small number of more in-depth, ongoing consulting partnerships each year with the companies and campuses interested in expanding their mattering work beyond a single workshop.
Belonging Isn't Enough.
Students Need to Know They Matter.
Belonging says: I am included here.
Mattering says: I make a positive difference here.
A student can belong to a dorm, a team, a club, or an entire campus—and still feel invisible or interchangeable. Mattering asks deeper questions:
Does anyone really know me? Does my voice carry weight? Is someone invested in my growth? Would my presence be missed?
The Mattering by Design Architects
-
Jennifer Wallace
Founder of The Mattering Institute
Mattering expert, researcher, thought leader, speaker, New York Times bestselling author
Jennifer is the founder of The Mattering Institute and a leading voice on mattering and its essential role in human well-being, workplace culture, and societal health. As a sought-after speaker, she has delivered keynotes about her research on the TED main stage, the Aspen Ideas Festival, SXSW, and hundreds of organizations worldwide. She is the author of two instant New York Times bestsellers, including Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — And What We Can Do About It and Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. Jennifer helps leaders and institutions translate the science of mattering into cultures and systems that strengthen human connection, engagement, and purpose.
-
Lauren Lavelle
Executive Director of The Mattering Institute
Mattering by Design Co-Creator and Lead Facilitator
Lauren is a strategy and communications leader who brings two decades of experience helping thought leaders bring their biggest ideas to life and maximize their impact. As Executive Director of The Mattering Institute, she works alongside Jennifer to turn research on mattering into practical frameworks organizations can put into practice. She leads the strategy and implementation behind every public-facing extension of Jennifer Wallace’s work, from research to partnerships to consulting engagements, and is the co-creator and lead facilitator of the Mattering by Design workshop.
-
Nicole Bitler Kuehnle
Data & Measurement Lead
Nicole Bitler Kuehnle, PhD leads data and measurement strategy and implementation at the Mattering Institute. Prior to this work, Nicole spent nearly a decade at Bain & Company, first as a strategy consultant, and then as Program Manager of Bain Futures, a global think tank, researching worker motivation and the future of work.
