This month George Mason University issued the Resilience Badge to a third cohort. The Resilience Badge is one of eight 21st Century Skills digital badges that the Lab developed with a dozen university partners. A diverse group of 36 students traversing varying majors, academic years, and student populations, joined together for their final meetup signifying the end of their badge earning journey.

Over the course of three years GMU has scaled their Resilience Badge from four badge earners in Spring 2016 to 82 this Fall, demonstrating their commitment to the Resilience Badge as a truly valuable credential as opposed to something that’s ‘nice to have’. Some students participated in a five-week hybrid workshop to earn the badge, while others will receive the badge through integration with a well-being course offered by GMU.

Several students shared their experience earning the badge with us after the workshop remarking on how these skills they learned are highly valuable to all students, and shouldn’t be exclusively taught to those with foresight to sign-up for the badge. Others commented how they were already able to start using some of the mindful practices they learned to manage their work-life balance and work more effectively with others on their work teams.