Roanoke harnesses positive psychology for student success

When Caleb Lingenfelter ’23 took the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment for a class in fall 2022, three of his top five strengths – competition, consistency and responsibility – immediately resonated with him.

As a senior sports management major and a starting pitcher on Roanoke College’s baseball team, Lingenfelter finds himself putting those qualities to work every day.

“I am a very competitive person, not just in sports. I want to be the best that I can be at what I do,” Lingenfelter said. “And I think consistency goes along with competition, because if you want to be good at something, you have to be consistent at it. There are days when I don’t want to go to practice or class, but I push myself to go.”

Using the CliftonStrengths assessment has deepened Lingenfelter’s understanding of himself and inspired him to focus more on his strengths than his perceived flaws. That emphasis on positive psychology is the whole idea behind CliftonStrengths, which has been rolled out to the entire Roanoke College community. The primary purpose is to strengthen student success, but faculty, staff and even trustees have also been invited to learn what makes them unique, how to leverage their strengths and how to coach students on the path to personal fulfillment.

Roanoke joins other higher education institutions, including Furman University, Purdue University, Villanova University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Virginia Tech, that have woven CliftonStrengths into career advising, teaching, residence life and other areas of the college experience. Each year, more than 700,000 U.S. college students take the assessment, and more than 29 million people worldwide have used the tool since it was launched in 1999 by American psychologist Don Clifton.

“Knowing our unique strengths empowers each of us to make academic, professional and personal decisions that unlock our potential and help us become our best selves,” said Roanoke College President Frank Shushok Jr., who is a Gallup-certified Strengths coach. “Recognizing and affirming others’ diverse strengths reveals the power and beauty of our interdependence as we use our collective and complementary talents to meet society’s greatest needs.”

The assessment, which takes about 30 minutes, asks the user to examine 177 paired statements and select which description most closely matches them. Those responses are used to measure a person’s natural patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving – referred to as talents – and categorize them into 34 strengths. Example strengths include responsibility, strategic, empathy, analytical and intellection.

Caleb Lingenfelter '23 uses his strengths – which include competition, consistency and responsibility – both in the classroom and on the baseball field.

Dean of Students Tom Rambo was no stranger to CliftonStrengths when it arrived at Roanoke. As a retired police commander, Rambo has had the chance to try out a variety of assessments over the years. Rambo assigned the CliftonStrengths assessment to his Team Dynamics class in fall 2022 and incorporated their results into the coursework, including group projects.

“I think this is a good way to value differences, work with others and be tolerant of those differences for the common good,” Rambo said. “We want people all throughout the campus to take the assessment and for it to help them in their job and their life.”

Staff in the College’s Center for Purpose, Life And Career Exploration (PLACE) have embraced CliftonStrengths as a valuable tool for career counseling. They plan to reference students’ results when advising them on coursework, internships, resumes and job placement.

Zoey Nichols ’24, a business administration major, has already mapped her top strengths – which included adaptability and ideation – to her chosen career path. She says her results reinforced her desire to work in human resources.

“Adaptability is important in human resources because there are always new trainings or new laws in place,” she said, “and ideation is important, as well, for coming up with new ideas and planning.

“I think we can learn a lot through tests like that,” she added, “because it helps us see things in ourselves that we may not have seen to begin with. It’s important to explore and learn as much about ourselves as possible before we have to go out into the real world.”

Nichols first took the assessment as a freshman in a leadership program managed by Jimmy Whited, director of Residence Life & Housing. Whited has been using CliftonStrengths with RAs and students in the leadership program for years. He first took the assessment as a graduate student in 2007, and he believes that college is an ideal time to encounter the tool.

“This is a way for students to understand who they are and know what their strengths are now as they are getting ready to launch into the next phase of life,” Whited said, “and introducing it campus-wide gives every person on campus, from President Shushok to someone who answers the phones in the evening, to say ‘You know what, here is stuff I’m good at; here are things that make me special and make me different.’”

Whited appreciates that CliftonStrengths focuses on “the power of positivity,” giving students a chance to identify attributes they can further develop to channel their best qualities.

“This has been done by millions of people, and studies show consistently that if you focus on positivity and spend more time and energy on what you’re good at, you actually become better at other things, too,” he said.