In 2020, Mason Chooses Kindness was created students, faculty, staff and alumni. Each year, a cohort of 100-plus volunteer ambassadors model kindness and share resources. A 2010 study from the University oaf Michigan found college students of the 2000s were less empathetic than college students in the 1980s and ’90s, and a 2022 article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health further found college students had less cognitive empathy and increased anxiety and depression as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. George Mason’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being created an initiative in 2021 to encourage students, faculty and staff members to show kindness to one another. Within Mason Chooses Kindness (MCK), hundreds of community members serve as kindness ambassadors, offering programming to promote exploration and engagement around the theme of kindness and modeling how to treat others with intentional grace.
Why kindness?
In 2013, George Mason established well-being as a commitment in its 10-year strategic plan, and the Center for the Advancement for Well-Being leads the initiative, collaborating with stakeholders to create a common theme. “In early 2020, and not knowing that COVID was around the corner, we chose the theme of kindness,” says Dr. Nance Lucas, Executive Director and Chief Well-being Officer. “Mason Chooses Kindness was intended to be a theme only for the 2020–21 year. Given its success and how much it was resonating with our community members, we decided to continue expanding it over the years.” The goal of MCK is to “create and sustain a kindness revolution,” according to the Mason website. Kindness, as defined by the institution, is intentionally engaging in positive action that is friendly, caring and compassionate toward oneself and others. “We know from the science of well-being that kindness is an antidote to loneliness and depression,” Lucas says. “One of our goals is to increase awareness about the impact of kindness, including ordinary examples like holding the door open for others or [other actions] that require more of us.”
Scaling up
“What we discovered is that kindness has become a unifying force at Mason, bringing together so many of our students, faculty and staff in programs like the Mason Kindness Ambassadors and Pats for Patriots,” Lucas said. “Unfolding MCK has been like leading a social movement. It’s had a snowball effect—as more people learn about it, they want to be involved.” MCK has scaled since launching, with 225 ambassadors in the 2023-2024 academic year, up from 200 in the 2022–2023 school year. of MCK. Mason’s Costello College of Business has its own kindness initiative, the goodwill team, which is responsible for highlighting and encouraging kindness among the college. The college also incorporates kindness and well-being into its professional development courses, BUS 103 and 303. MCK recently partnered with the Patriot Pantry to create kindness cards for pantry users before the winter break and with Mason Athletics to hold a kindness-themed game. Forrest added “Our hope this that we can sustain the work we are doing and continue to increase the number of kindness ambassadors and the overall level of kindness across Mason.”