Strengthening Small Colleges
Clear Student Direction | Stronger Retention | Engaged Alumni
Helping Students Discover Direction Early
Life Atlas® for Small Colleges
Small private colleges succeed when students find their purpose early and develop a clear sense of direction.
When students understand their signature strengths, natural learning tendencies, interests, and values, their engagement deepens. Student retention improves. Advising becomes more intentional and effective. Alumni engagement becomes more meaningful and sustained.
Life Atlas offers a strategic institutional ecosystem that enhances personal development, combines career development with academic advising, and turns alumni engagement into a proactive mentoring network.
By integrating student self-awareness, career exploration, and alumni connections into a unified framework, small colleges enhance retention while supporting their foundational mission.
A Defining Moment for Small Private Colleges
Small private colleges are navigating significant pressures:
- Enrollment volatility and demographic decline
- Rising expectations for measurable student success
- The need to articulate a distinctive institutional identity
For some colleges, these pressures are not just temporary obstacles; they are existential challenges. Setting each student’s unique personal formation as the central organizing principle addresses these challenges at their source.
Personal Formation and Life Atlas
We help put personal formation at the center of the college culture.
When personal formation starts early, students begin to see themselves more clearly. They choose courses intentionally. They engage in deeper dialogue. They stay committed because their education feels coherent and personal.
Personal formation does not occur in isolation. It grows through alignment across the life of the institution. Conversations with advisors focus on discernment, interests, enthusiasm, and long-term direction. Decisions replace drift.
Life Atlas brings advising, vocational exploration, and alumni engagement into a shared formative framework supported by practical instruments.
Students start by completing the Gifts Compass Inventory (GCI) and the Discover Your Passion assessment to identify their strengths, natural learning styles, interests, values, and aspirations. Advisors then help students focus on a few career paths where they are most likely to flourish—and define specific next steps.
Alumni contribute to a public Work Profile Database, describing the work they do and the gifts needed for their roles. Students can start secure conversations with graduates whose careers align with their emerging interests.
In this integrated approach, career discernment becomes a journey toward contribution, where gifts, values, and vocation align. Career direction is no longer merely a means of making a living; it becomes a way of making a life.
The assessments and, more importantly, reflection and follow-up exercises were invaluable.
Students were really able to see potential paths for themselves and have the tools to guide
them through that work."
“I was able to put my dreams and goals in perspective. It was interesting to see how detailed
both the questionnaire and results were.”
“I have an aptitude for dreaming inwardly and also outwardly dreaming big—I want to make big
changes in the outside world, not just within my own little circle. The Visionary, Aesthetic, and
Idealistic Gifts include my talent for poetry/artistry, and my Idealistic and Social Gifts team up
as a devotion to maintaining and enhancing a sense of Community wherever I am living. This
is such an exciting combination of gifts because it allows me to be a really spectacular member
of society as well as an artist!”
“After participating in the Life Atlas Program, I still plan on majoring in Healthcare
Administration, but I am contemplating minoring in something that might engage my creative
side. After reading over my results, I am aware that if I do not engage my more creative nature,
I may find work to be tedious after a while.”
“I believe the Gifts Compass Profile is an essential tool for all students, both undergraduate
and graduate . . . I have been a participant in others, such as the Meyers-Briggs, and have
been left wanting. The Gifts Compass Profile allows the participant to reflect upon personal
experiences that have made a profound impact on their life.”
“Before, I had little idea what my gifts were or how they correlated with the future I have
planned. After doing the Discover Your Passion consult, I now know what steps to take next
toward my career. I can use the knowledge that I have learned and apply it to the choices I
make . . . I can “look before I leap” so that I don’t get stuck in something I have no interest in!”
“I am really leaning towards being an Expressive Arts Therapist or an English/Creative Writing
Teacher (at a private school or college). . . I want to be able to lead groups and individuals
toward a more introspective, reflective, healthy, community-aware, and creative lifestyle.
Being able to integrate poetry, art, memoir-writing, dance/movement, and theater into my life
and the lives of others needs to be important in whichever career I choose.”
“I entered college as a biology major. At the end of my freshman year, I felt neither happy nor
successful. Feeling lost, with no sense of clear direction, I completed the Discover Your
Passion assessment. It gave me a renewed sense of purpose and direction. I changed my
major to marketing, and I made the dean’s list. Now, I am doing better than ever in school; I
enjoy the work and my new friends. I feel that I have found a course of study that matches my
gifts and passion well. I would highly recommend the Gifts Compass to any incoming college
student.”
The Power of Being Small
Small colleges have a distinctive strength: they can understand and support each student as an individual.
They can be communities of formation where character is deepened, convictions are strengthened, and direction develops within relationships that last well beyond graduation.
Students do more than just complete a curriculum. They clarify their commitments and prepare to make their unique contribution.
Endeavor Lab Colleges Partnership
Life Atlas is privileged to partner with the Endeavor Lab Colleges to help enhance the lives and work of students in smaller colleges.
From the Endeavor Lab Colleges website:
Together, we are forging a new framework, rooted in the values of the liberal arts, to meet the moment and shape a more compassionate, connected future for the liberal arts and our communities.
For nearly a decade, Endeavor Foundation has engaged in deep conversation with small liberal arts colleges, listening closely to our shared challenges and supporting individual campus initiatives with generosity and vision. As pressures on our institutions have intensified, particularly in the years surrounding and post-pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that our individual and isolated efforts are no longer sufficient. Students are facing mounting mental health challenges, a growing sense of disconnection, and uncertainty about their place in a rapidly changing world. These realities are not only impacting individual well-being but also undercutting the very heart of our educational mission.
From Project Director Lori Collins-Hall
“In the face of this growing crisis, we recognize that collaboration – not competition – is our greatest strength. Together, we imagine a new model: one that would reframe student and community well-being not as an ancillary service, but as central to the liberal arts experience.”
The Colleges:
Begin the Conversation
If your goal is to foster a collegiate environment that prioritizes each student’s personal growth, we invite you to consider Life Atlas as your partner. We would be happy to have a conversation.
Dr. Lindsay Davies
PhD, Psychological Types & Education
MA, Psychoanalytic Studies
MS, Research Methods
PGCHE
Dip Jungian Coaching
Dr. Barry Preston
D.Min., Spiritual Formation
M.Div., Theology
M.A., Film Studies
ELA Teacher Certification
B.A., Religion Studies