Reducing failure rates in higher education is typically a mark of student success. But Hamilton College is flipping the narrative this academic year with a new campaign that teaches students to fail and bounce back.

The “failing better” campaign, led by the university’s student success division, ALEX, provides resources and support for staff to push students out of their comfort zones and help them learn to recover from setbacks. The goal is to create a culture shift that makes students more resilient and better prepared to address challenges head on.

The background: ALEX—short for advise, learn and experience—was established about five years ago in an effort to consolidate educational support services on campus. The division has three pillars—advising, learning and experiential supports— each with four offices.

When KinHo Chan became Hamilton’s dean of engaged education three years ago, he realized that while the offices have a singular leadership reporting structure, they shared little synergy or cross-office engagement.

“One of the things that I wanted to explore with the group is, what does it mean for us to work together? In what way are we doing things that are similar, and in what way are we doing things that can reinforce each other’s work?”

So Chan established annual campaigns to facilitate more partnerships and meaningful work across the division, facilitating conversation about common challenges. Last year’s theme was reflection, encouraging students to pause and consider their educational experiences and paths.

Failing better: This year’s campaign, failing better, is a response to the needs of today’s students. Research shows that Gen Z learners are more likely than previous groups of college students to experience anxiety and existential dread. Recent developments in generative artificial intelligence tools have added another layer of challenge and uncertainty to students’ lives, and the disruptions to social development due to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect young people.

“Rather than viewing struggles with attention spans or technology disruptions as failure, we want to reframe these as natural learning adaptations that require support and guidance,” Chan said.

The campaign will launch this fall. In preparation, Chan and his team are creating mindful interventions to encourage students to take risks and learn from failure. For example, in academic advising, students may need encouragement to take a challenging course and view it as a meaningful risk.

“I want to create a campus culture where failure is reframed as an essential component of learning, innovation and personal growth,” Chan said.

One resource guiding this work is Amy Edmondson’s book, “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well,” which discusses how individuals can think carefully about choosing risks, learning from failing and adapting to challenges. Not all failures are good failures, Chan noted, so identifying when to push students is key.

What’s next: In preparation for the campaign, each office within ALEX is identifying ways to talk about failure and apply it to their own contexts, as well as identifying campus partners who could be involved in the work, such as the library and research or career services. Incoming students participating in orientation will also engage with some new materials concerning failure and a few faculty members have bought into the idea, incorporating content around “failing forward” into their syllabi.

Chan is hoping to invite outside guests and alumni to contribute to the conversation through a speaker series, as well as holding a public speaking competition for students related to failure.

The office will track engagement and student feedback to gauge impact, as well as monitor student behavior, such as participation in experiential learning, study abroad or different course enrollment patterns.

Personally, Chan is excited to see where the failure project fails.

“We have a lot of ideas, and I’m not sure all of them are going to work,” Chan said. “How do we model what we are talking about, how do we reframe failure and how do we learn from them? How can we do better?”

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