How Allegheny’s Community Approach Empowers Students to Embark on Lives With Intention, Integrity, and Impact
Allegheny alumni know this truth well: the most important thing the College gives them isn’t a job title. It’s a framework for navigating life, shaped with intention, curiosity, and a sense of purpose.
Today, Allegheny is doubling down on that legacy. Through a bold, integrated model that blends academic rigor with reflection, identity exploration, community engagement, and holistic wellbeing, the College is helping students design lives that feel grounded, connected, and genuinely meaningful.
What makes this approach distinct is that reflection is not separated from action. Students are encouraged to test ideas about purpose through lived experience, particularly through service and civic engagement.
Beginning in 2025, those efforts expanded dramatically with the introduction of an innovative Life Design sequence for students who benefit from structured support. It’s a shift that is reshaping the first-year experience, and, increasingly, the campus culture itself.
What Life Design Means and Why It Matters
Life Design is an integral part of Allegheny’s evolving co-curricular ecosystem. It’s not just a course, a workshop, or a checklist. It’s a way of thinking.
Dean of Student and Community Development Heather Moore Roberson, Ph.D., offers her definition.
Life Design in my mind is really a space to deconstruct who you are when you come to college, and to really develop your interests to help lead you to the majors, the careers, the internships that you can then pursue that can help you later on,” she says. “It’s about exploring your purpose, your interests, and the things that bring you enjoyment, rooted in understanding who you are as a human being.
She adds that Life Design intentionally gives students room to ask questions they often haven’t had time or permission to pose before arriving at college.
The concept, originally built at Stanford University and adapted by hundreds of institutions, arrived at Allegheny during a major reorganization of student support offices. As Roberson and President Ron Cole ’87, Ph.D., examined the changing needs of students, a pattern emerged: Allegheny excelled at wraparound support, but students needed more encouragement to find themselves.
“They needed space to explore what they enjoy, what brings them fulfillment, and how they envision their future,” Roberson says. “Life Design became the natural home for that exploration.”
The Life Design sequence now includes six areas of focus, from developing a student’s core values to defining the purpose of a college education. Students opt into the experience through a three-session lunch series. Beginning in fall 2026, Life Design may become fully woven into the first-year experience through exploratory advising courses and a Weekend of Welcome.
“All first-year students may engage with the full Life Design sequence within their first year,” Roberson says. “It has the potential to be very transformative and very powerful.”
“Students Are Searching”
For many students, college begins with uncertainty, ranging from personal, academic, to emotional. That’s where Life Design comes in.
“A lot of students on campus are searching,” says Senior Associate Dean of Student and Community Development Dominique “Dom” Turner. “They’re trying to figure stuff out and they don’t always know how. Life Design gives them the opportunity to think about the experiences they’ve had so far, who they aspire to be, and to make intentional decisions that lead toward the life they want.”
Turner emphasizes that community-based work often helps students clarify those decisions by showing them the real-world impact of their choices.
Director of Life Design Natalie Brown-Gregg sees this every day.
“We’re finding that about 40 percent of students are coming out of high school suffering from anxiety or depression,” she says. “So we slow them down. We help them think about where they come from, how those experiences shaped them, and how they show up now as young adults at Allegheny.”
That slowing down, she notes, is often what allows students to recognize strengths they already possess.
Reflection. Identity mapping. Journaling. Intentional dialogue. These tools help students make sense of their own lives.
“It’s not us telling students what’s right or wrong,” Brown-Gregg says. “It’s the students examining their own lives with the tools we give them.”
Saruni Lemargeroi, director of Spiritual, Religious, and Personal Wellbeing, sees Life Design as a chance to reclaim balance.
“It’s easy to go through life on autopilot,” he says. “We ask students: How do your daily actions align with your values? What does success look like for you? What is your purpose for existence?”
He also stresses that purpose is often discovered through relationships and service, not in isolation.
It is important to note that in many cases, Life Design work can be a precursor to the work that is done in the Center for Career & Professional Development (CCPD), which works with students, alumni, employers, faculty, and staff to promote career coaching and exploration, alumni and employer engagement, and career readiness.
“Not all students are ready to focus on a specific career outcome when they arrive at Allegheny College, and that’s not a failure of ambition; it’s a natural part of development,” says Vice President for Institutional Advancement and the CCPD Matt Stinson, Ph.D. “Life Design meets students where they are, giving them a chance to pause, reflect, and build clarity and confidence about their future.”
A Student’s Breakthrough
For first-year student Z Harper ’29, Life Design wasn’t an optional enrichment. It was a lifeline.
Harper arrived from Syracuse, N.Y., with a plan to major in community and justice studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, with a minor in Arabic. At the beginning of the fall semester, everything felt off.
“I was experiencing a minor crisis,” Harper says. “It was early on in the semester and I felt lost, so I went to the Life Design workshop to hopefully find some guidance.”
The timing mattered, Harper says, because it gave him permission to pause rather than push through uncertainty alone.
Harper didn’t have expectations, just a hope for something steady. “I was in search of any kind of guidance,” he says. “I was hoping to learn how to spend more time in the present instead of constantly focusing on the future.”
The workshop opened the door to new opportunities.
“There were moments where I confronted negative experiences in my past that I never really acknowledged before,” Harper says. “I had the opportunity to reflect on how those experiences have shaped my present and how it could influence my future. It was a great start to grounding myself in the present.”
One discussion Harper had with Brown-Gregg resulted in a breakthrough to seizing the moment.
“There was one conversation where I was talking about this feeling of being lost,” he says. “When I entered college, I had a rough outline of milestones, but once I actually got here, it was totally different.”
Brown-Gregg reframed the problem for him. “She said something along the lines of, you feel lost because you’re looking too far ahead instead of what’s right in front of you,” Harper recalls.
Then Brown-Gregg pointed him back to the life he was already building through the Bonner Program, the Black Student Union, and the Queer Student Union. “I took Natalie’s advice, and I feel much more confident now in my
college journey.”
Life Design also reshaped how Harper imagines his future. “The one-on-one conversations helped me realize the value of the resources available on campus,” he says. “These resources help develop the skills I will need in my
future career.”
Harper hopes to be a community organizer, or maybe pursue a career in politics, and sees Life Design as a foundation for that path.
“The guidance I received helped me develop the habit of focusing on the present,” he says. “That changed everything.”
Redefining What Success Means
Life Design reframes success as more than a résumé. “It’s about preparing students to live lives of purpose,” Brown-Gregg says, “and to approach challenges with a mindset of possibility.”
Turner emphasizes that the work begins with honoring who students already are. “We’re always intentional about not imposing ourselves on students,” he says. “They come from unique backgrounds and experiences. We want their lived experiences to inform how they show up as students.”
Roberson sees this shift as essential to how students navigate college. “Many students talk about feeling overwhelmed,” she explains. “Or they come in with one linear path, like pre-med, and then discover an entirely different passion. Life Design helps them navigate those twists and turns.”
The Well: An Environment for Growth
Life Design doesn’t operate in isolation. It sits within The Well, the College’s center for personal, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing. The Well includes Life Design, Achievement Initiatives, and Community Engagement, a constellation of programs that supports students as whole people.
Students find workshops, mindfulness sessions, spiritual life offerings, and peer-supported dialogues. They also find space, literal and figurative, to process their lives.
“Some students are so busy they don’t have 10 minutes for lunch,” Lemargeroi says. “But when they slow down, they feel less overwhelmed and more grounded.”
Regulating emotions. Managing conflict. Understanding identity. Seeing multiple perspectives. These are as essential to a meaningful life as academic success.
“Your mental wellbeing is very important to us,” Lemargeroi says. “Academic excellence matters, but so does being able to coexist with people who think differently.”
The Life Design Lab, located beside the Life Design Office in the Campus Center, gives this philosophy a physical home. Outfitted with comfortable seating, craft materials, and a warm, creative vibe, the Lab is where students gather to think, imagine, decompress, and
build community.
“It’s really a place for creating,” Brown-Gregg says.
The Lab also houses the Mutual Aid Closet, which provides toiletries, winter gear, and basic essentials. It’s a simple but powerful idea.
“If your basic needs go unmet, it’s harder to be reflective,” Turner notes. “Something as simple as not having winter gloves becomes a barrier.”
RISE: The First Cohort to Experience Life Design
In 2024, Allegheny launched the Reach, Inspire, Support, Engage (RISE) program – a selective, hands-on program for first-year Allegheny students who may need support academically and socially to persist to graduation. About 60 percent of RISE students are male athletes, though the cohort includes non-athletes as well.
RISE students were the first to pilot Allegheny’s Life Design sequence. The students arrived two-and-a-half weeks before classes started in the fall, allowing them to become immersed in sessions on values, purpose, the function of college, and even practical knowledge like financial responsibility and cost-of-living scenarios. Their feedback has shaped the broader Life Design curriculum
that may soon be required for all first-year students.
Roberson values their insights deeply. “Our students often feel overwhelmed,” she says. “Life Design helps them ask: What do I actually want? What brings me joy?”
A Culture Built on Curiosity and Care
Allegheny’s culture is evolving as Life Design becomes more deeply woven into the overall student experience. The College is cultivating a community where students, and perhaps employees in the future, feel empowered to explore big questions.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if employees say, ‘Hey, we need Life Design, too,’” Roberson says. “It’s that impactful.”
Turner agrees. “We want students to know there are different perspectives and different lived experiences, and that all of them add value to our community.”
The College has also added the Life Design Speaker and Community Dialogue Series, funded by an anonymous source, which amplifies these conversations through nationally recognized voices.
The initiative features two keynote lectures each academic year, delivered by prominent scholars and practitioners whose work focuses on collective wellbeing, personal agency, and community engagement. Each keynote is paired with a shared book selection that provides context for the lecture and encourages campus-wide participation. By extending beyond a single event, the series creates structured opportunities for sustained engagement, reflection, and action.
In fall 2025, Allegheny welcomed Dr. Joe-Joe McManus, executive coach and scholar of race and equity, as the first keynote lecturer. To deepen the conversation, some members of the College’s campus community also read his book, “A Brother’s Insight.”
Assessing Whether Life Design Works
For Roberson, success will be measured in several ways. “We’ll know it works when more students have a better understanding of who they are and who they want to be,” she says.
She anticipates earlier conversations about careers, earlier declarations of majors, and eventually stronger first-destination outcomes. But she’s also watching for quieter signs such as students articulating their values, regulating their emotions, and feeling confident navigating uncertainty.
Allegheny’s approach is clear: prepare students not just for a job, but for lives of reflection, intention, and joy – lives shaped not by pressure, but by purpose. Lives they design for themselves.
