Client Story
How Denison is redefining relationship-centered education by making the hidden work of learning visible.
By Leonard Geddes and the Denison community
At Denison, relationships are not a slogan. They are infrastructure.
Many colleges write down their values. Denison makes sure you feel them. I felt it within minutes of my first classroom visit in 2018.
Faculty advise, mentor, and research alongside students. Learning spills out of classrooms into hallways and late-night conversations. And yet Denison's science faculty kept asking a harder question: which students are not fully benefiting?
of alums secure work in their desired field
of alumni are satisfied with how Denison prepared them for their careers
First-generation students vs. their peers who felt they belonged in their science classes
The Effort Paradox
How students prepared
Reviewing. Memorizing. Retrieving.
Long hours, office hours, tutors, and doubling down on what had always worked before.
What exams demanded
Analysis. Synthesis. Transformation.
Navigating ambiguity, connecting ideas, and working across multiple representations of a problem.
Making Academic Work Visible
Faculty own academic integrity.
Administrators own the systems that support and uphold it.
Students own the culture.
That is why the work at Denison was led by students. Peer Learning Strategists taught their classmates three skills that made the hidden work of learning visible.
Recognize, concretely and viscerally, how shallow thinking differs from advanced thinking.
Connect daily class content to a course's broader goals, and see what assessments really ask for.
Align the way students think and study with the learning goals of each course.
“I had never considered that the way I was thinking and processing information might not match what my professors expected.”
What Changed
“This approach harnesses the power of relationships and community, helping all our students translate effort into learning. It has changed how we support our students.”
In Their Own Words
Faculty, Peer Learning Strategists, and students share how the partnership changed the way they teach, learn, and support one another.
Featuring Dr. Ayana Hinton, Dr. Annabel Edwards, and Rebecca, Peer Learning Strategist
The Bigger Idea
Enrollment management brings students to campus. Enrollment Health asks whether they thrive once they arrive.
It looks at whether an institution's teaching, support structures, and norms create the conditions for every student to turn opportunity into achievement. At Denison, belonging is where the work begins. Capability is what it builds.
The LearnWell Projects partners with colleges and universities to make the hidden work of learning visible and build Enrollment Health.
