A Fellowship That Lets Students Lead the Way to Flourishing

Since January 2025, I've noticed the frequent use of certain euphemisms in my advising conversations with international students. Phrases such as "in this unique climate" or "in this shifting landscape" aim to describe complex changes without raising unnecessary concern.

As designated school officials, we must balance accuracy with reassurance and provide guidance with respect for students' autonomies. The measured diction acknowledges the uncertainties our students face and reflects the careful approach we take to help them navigate situations with outcomes that are difficult to predict.

While the restrained, diplomatic language is important when advising these students, I'm grateful there is another part of my work at the University of Virginia (UVA) that allows for an entirely different vocabulary.

'A Register of Hope and Possibility'

The Citizen Leader Fellowship (CLF, Fellowship), grounded in UVA's Contemplative Sciences Center's flourishing initiative, allows me to speak to students in a register of hope and possibility rather than restraint. As the CLF's cofounder and one of its colead instructors, I get to say: Yes. Go full steam ahead. Build. Take a risk. Test an idea. Explore a new way of leading or being.

Unlike the caution that governs international student advising, the CLF is about unleashing the imagination and translating one's deepest values into actions.

Now in its fifth year, the CLF is a collaboration between UVA's International Studies Office (ISO), Contemplative Sciences Center, Transfer Student Counseling, and the athletics department. One of its greatest strengths is the exceptional colleagues who make it possible. They bring expertise in contemplative practice, values clarification, mentoring, a willingness to build a cocurricular program that doesn't neatly fit into a singular office mandate, and—perhaps most importantly—a contagious generosity of spirit.

Building Community Through Contemplation and Ethnography

The Fellowship emerged from a shared vision, shaped by a blend of disciplines—including my own training as a cultural anthropologist. At its core, the CLF weaves together two modes of learning: the contemplative, which grounds reflection in the self, and the ethnographic, which uses the self as a research tool for understanding others. These approaches come to life in the hands of the students.

Each year, the CLF brings together international students, student athletes, and transfer students—three populations whose experiences are infused with added layers of pressure and complexity. Each fall, we issue a call for proposals across the twelve schools at UVA, inviting graduate and undergraduate students to identify a specific, pressing challenge affecting the well-being of their peers or broader communities.

Over the course of the Fellowship year, those selected design and implement programs to address these challenges, drawing not only on the tools and guidance provided by the Fellowship—which range from structured reflections on values-aligned leadership and project-management skills to public speaking workshops—but also on their own creativity.

For the roughly twenty fellows whose proposals are selected each year, the animating question is always the same: How can I make the path easier and more joyful for peers confronting similar challenges now—and for future students who will follow?

A Year of Deep Work

The fellows' motivation is profound. In addition to their academic workloads, research obligations, and athletic schedules, they volunteer to spend one full academic year (and sometimes more) designing and implementing original community-building projects.

The Fellowship commences with a day-long retreat designed to help students get to know one another, not just as peers with their own projects, but as whole people with stories, predilections, and values. The retreat blends fun and reflection: icebreakers, walking meditation, community mapping, "values in motion" exercises, conversational interview practice, and a delicious meal. These experiential learning activities set the stage for the year ahead, cultivating the foundations for personal and collective flourishing.

Over the Fellowship year, students continue to develop the skills introduced at the retreat. Contemplative practices direct attention inward, fostering reflection on guiding values, strengthening resilience, and nurturing the capacity to "come home to self." Ethnographic methods direct attention outward, guiding fellows to listen deeply to community members and project stakeholders.

From Insight to Impact

Through this interplay of inward and outward attention, students build projects grounded in actual community needs. CLF initiatives range from journaling workshops, cooking and cultural exchanges, and student-produced podcasts and photography projects that document student life. Others focus on advocacy: expanding access to housing, transportation, the honor system, career resources, culturally meaningful food, mental health support, and mentorship for new UVA students and students in Charlottesville, Virginia's public schools. Each project channels the fellows' creativity, values, and dedication to the communities they care about.

While some projects are one-time offerings or events, others take root in the institution. Global Peer-to-Peer, created by a pair of fellows to connect incoming international students with peer mentors from their home regions, now operates out of our ISO and reaches hundreds each year.

Fellows also proposed the ISO's prearrival virtual orientation series, recognizing the critical role of summer engagement. Student-centered panels on topics such as "Academic Culture," "How to Be a Happy, Healthy Hoo," and "What I Wish I Had Known" are now central to how we welcome and prepare new international students.

The Graduate African Professional Student Association also began as a CLF initiative to address the isolation experienced by African graduate students. Today, it is a vital support network of more than 100 members who build community, mentorship opportunities, and cross-cultural connection across UVA.

Learning to Lead

The most striking part of the Fellowship isn't just that students create exciting or enduring initiatives, it's their personal growth and the microcommunities they build along the way.

Through interviews, reflective exercises, and the ongoing work of aligning values with action, fellows learn that leadership is less about delivering a perfect solution and more about taking purposeful action, listening deeply, and finding common cause with others.

As they share ideas, face obstacles, and encourage one another, the cohort of fellows create space to practice values-aligned leadership—listening to one another, asking good questions, and supporting each other through setbacks and uncertainty.

Ideas in Motion

The year's Fellowship concludes with a public showcase at the Contemplative Sciences Center, where each fellow delivers a five-minute TED-style talk on their project and its impact. In preparation, fellows complete a one-credit spring short course with public-speaking workshops where they learn to use their full bodies as instruments of expression and to move past the anxieties that get in the way of their natural voice and presence.

Audiences of faculty, staff, visitors, and senior administrators are consistently moved by the showcase, leaving with a renewed appreciation for the challenges students face and the power of student-led solutions. Many follow up, eager to partner with our office and support international students with fresh insight.

One image has stayed with me. Last year, a group of Fellows suggested our CLF logo be a paper airplane. It's perfect. Every project starts as an idea, nothing more. With time, deep listening, collaboration, and persistence, the idea is shaped and set in motion. Some planes soar quickly, others zig and zag before taking flight, and some join UVA's permanent fleet. The remarkable thing about a paper airplane is that anyone can make one. On days when advising feels like triage, I remind myself that social change often begins this way: an idea, shaped in community, given a chance to fly. •

Caren Freeman is a cultural anthropologist and international student and scholar adviser at the University of Virginia.