BentleyPlus at Bentley University
BentleyPlus is a wellbeing initiative at Bentley University rooted in competency development. The program helps students develop 10 core competencies, including community exploration, problem solving, leadership, and wellbeing, through advising, reflection, and a range of co-curricular experiences. These skills and habits are designed to support career readiness while also fostering the identity, resilience, and sense of purpose that contribute to lifelong flourishing.
Over time, wellbeing evolved from one competency within the BentleyPlus framework to the program's central organizing principle. Through BentleyPlus 2.0, the university has expanded its focus on wellbeing as a foundation for student success, incorporating wellbeing-focused goal setting, enhanced reflection and advising, and stronger integration across academic and student affairs.
Problem and Rationale
BentleyPlus emerged in response to two interconnected challenges: the need to help students develop and articulate key competencies, and the need to strengthen student wellbeing.
The focus on competency development grew out of an ongoing national conversation about the skills and habits young people require to thrive in an increasingly complex workplace and society. In addition to technical knowledge, employers and educators have emphasized the importance of capacities such as leadership, critical thinking, and dialogue. It is important for students to have opportunities to develop these competencies, but also to recognize how they are cultivated across different experiences and relevant to academic, professional, and personal contexts.
The second challenge centers on student wellbeing. Like many colleges and universities, Bentley had been tracking worrisome trends concerning student mental health, sense of belonging, and resilience. These factors can profoundly shape students' ability to engage in their learning, build meaningful relationships, and pursue their professional goals. It was time, Bentley decided, to rethink the support structures and developmental experiences that help students thrive both during and beyond college.
How It Works
BentleyPlus is organized around three developmental domains — Develop, Think, and Act — which encompass the competencies students cultivate throughout their undergraduate experience:
- Develop: Community Exploration, Identity Awareness, and Wellbeing
- Think: Community Engagement, Critical Thinking, Ethical Reasoning, and Problem Solving
- Act: Dialogue, Leadership, and Teamwork
In practice, students develop these competencies through advising, reflection, student employment, co-curricular involvement, community engagement, and other campus experiences.
Core Components
Advising and Reflection
- Students work with BentleyPlus advisors and supervisors to identify competencies they would like to develop and to establish wellbeing goals.
- Through structured conversations, students assess their growth in selected competencies over time while reflecting on their wellbeing, resilience, and work ethic.
- Reflection is embedded throughout the program and encourages students to draw connections between what they learn in different areas (e.g., the classroom, student organizations, the workplace, social life).
- Advisors help students recognize and articulate the skills, insights, and habits they are developing through their experiences.
- Peer mentors support competency development and wellbeing through workshops, events, and coaching conversations with fellow students.
Skill Development Through Applied Experiences
- Students develop competencies through participation in co-curricular activities, student employment, community engagement, experiential learning opportunities, and other campus programs.
- Rather than focusing solely on workshops or classroom instruction, BentleyPlus emphasizes applying competencies in authentic settings and reflecting on those experiences.
- Students engage with alumni and industry professionals through programs such as Wellbeing at Work, exploring how wellbeing and competencies contribute to long-term career success.
- Students are encouraged to make connections between these experiences and future academic, professional, and personal goals.
Wellbeing Integration
- Wellbeing is treated as a foundational element of student development and is intentionally integrated throughout the BentleyPlus experience.
- Students establish personal wellbeing goals and regularly reflect on the relationship between wellbeing, resilience, learning, and performance.
- BentleyPlus serves as a campus-wide champion for integrated wellbeing, reinforcing that wellbeing is developed through academic, co-curricular, and community experiences.
- The program promotes outcomes such as identity development, belonging, agency, character, and purpose through intentional engagement and reflection.
How It Was Implemented
Phase 1: Establishing BentleyPlus
BentleyPlus was launched in 2021 as a competency-based student development initiative to help students cultivate and articulate skills through experiences inside and outside the classroom. The program was built around a shared competency framework that provided a common language for student growth and connected co-curricular involvement, student employment, leadership experiences, community engagement, and other campus activities to personal and professional development.
The initiative was housed within student affairs and supported by staff members there who helped students identify competencies and reflect on their progress over time. From the outset, the program emphasized these supportive dialogues for helping students recognize the value of their experiences and communicate their growth to future employers, graduate schools, and other audiences.
Implementation also relied on collaboration with campus partners who provided opportunities for students to practice competencies in authentic settings. By embedding competency development within existing student experiences rather than creating entirely new programs, BentleyPlus established a flexible model that could be integrated across multiple departments and areas of campus life.
Phase 2: BentleyPlus 2.0
As BentleyPlus matured, university leaders recognized an opportunity to build on the competency framework by placing wellbeing at the center. This next phase, known as BentleyPlus 2.0, reframed wellbeing from one competency among many into the program's primary organizing principle and aligned the initiative more closely with Bentley's broader goals for student success and flourishing.
A key step in this transition was the development of a shared institutional definition of wellbeing that guides BentleyPlus programming and student engagement. The framework describes wellbeing as a dynamic balance of personal and community wellness, emphasizing support, meaningful relationships, and purpose as foundations for student flourishing.
BentleyPlus 2.0 introduced a designated office of staff to support the work, as well as several new initiatives designed to embed wellbeing more intentionally throughout the student lifecycle. These include wellbeing-focused orientation experiences for new students, structured wellbeing goal setting, ongoing reflection on wellbeing and resilience, expanded advising and mentorship, competency-specific workshops, and peer and professional coaching opportunities.
The implementation of BentleyPlus 2.0 also expanded responsibility for student wellbeing beyond the BentleyPlus office itself. The program established partnerships with the Student Success Center, Career Development Center, Alumni and Family Engagement, academic departments, the Center for Innovation and Teaching and Learning, and other student affairs units. Faculty and staff have become increasingly involved through collaborative programming, student employment initiatives, orientation experiences, and wellbeing-focused learning opportunities.
Through these partnerships, BentleyPlus evolved from a competency-development program into a campus-wide framework for integrating wellbeing, learning, and student success. Rather than relying on a single intervention or department, the initiative increasingly positioned wellbeing as a shared institutional responsibility embedded throughout the student experience.
Assessment & Evidence
Scale and Reach
- More than 60 advisors across the institution support 330 students participating in the competency program.
- During the 2025–26 academic year, students completed 331 fall progress meetings and 306 spring progress meetings as part of the program's advising and assessment process.
Growth Impact
- In the fall, 66% of students rated themselves at one of the two highest levels for their competency (“personally competent” or “increasing others’ learning). By spring, that figure had increased to 83%.
- The percentage of students rating themselves at the highest competency level (“increasing others’ learning”) increased from 18% to 38% across the academic year.
- Program satisfaction data indicates that a majority of students are having positive experiences with BentleyPlus and perceived growth in their competency development over time.
Voices of BentleyPlus
Student reflections suggest that BentleyPlus experiences help participants better understand the relationship between wellbeing, learning, and professional success.
The following testimonies came from students who participated in a BentleyPlus Wellbeing at Work site visit, where they engaged with alumni and organizational leaders about how wellbeing contributes to career effectiveness, resilience, and long-term success. Two students said afterwards:
- “One of the highlights was a panel featuring Bentley alumni who shared thoughtful and honest insights about succeeding in their careers while still prioritizing their health and personal lives.”
- “A key takeaway was that wellbeing isn’t something separate from day-to-day operations — it needs to be fully integrated into how organizations function.”
Scalability
BentleyPlus was intentionally designed as a flexible and scalable model for student development and wellbeing. The program components that make it most versatile to expansion across a single institution or many include:
- Developing a shared competency and wellbeing framework that provides a common language for student development while allowing individual departments, programs, and institutions to adapt the model to their own goals and student populations
- Embedding advising and reflection into existing student support structures, enabling faculty mentors, student affairs professionals, academic advisors, job supervisors, and peer educators to facilitate competency development and wellbeing conversations
- Leveraging existing student experiences as learning opportunities, including student employment, leadership positions, community engagement, internships, athletics, and co-curricular involvement, so that competency development occurs through activities already taking place across campus
- Distributing ownership across campus partners, engaging Student Affairs, Career Development, Student Success, faculty, alumni relations, and other units to embed wellbeing and student development throughout the institution rather than within a single office
- Using structured reflection to connect learning across contexts, helping students recognize how competencies developed in academic, co-curricular, professional, and personal settings transfer across different areas of life
- Integrating wellbeing into existing student-development efforts, positioning wellbeing as a foundational element of advising, leadership development, student employment, orientation, and career readiness initiatives rather than a standalone program
Resources
Media
Contact
Andrew Shepardson
Vice President for Student Affairs, Office of Dean for Student Affairs
ashepardson@bentley.eduMore in Experiential Learning
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