Life101 Student Access

In 2012, Dr. Mahtab Jafari developed Life101 with the goal of improving students’ mental and physical health, after realizing how serious the stress epidemic was on college campuses across the U.S. Years later, we could have never anticipated that our students would be living through a pandemic that would exacerbate the stress epidemic. Survey data from our students in 2020 found that 87% of students expressed that their mental health has been negatively impacted by the pandemic. These negative impacts of stress during the pandemic were especially seen in students who had already identified having low levels of mental health. For these reasons, courses like Life101 are especially important for our campus community. From learning to deal with stress and the importance of emotional intelligence to learning skills such as mindfulness and nature therapy, Life101 inspired our students to focus on self-care.

Since the start of the pandemic, Dr. Jafari has offered Life101 online three times, with an average enrollment of 500-600 students per quarter. This past winter quarter, the course was offered for the first time to students across all 10 UC campuses. According to the pre- and post-course surveys, the course has had a tremendous positive impact on our students. Students who completed Life101 reported that they were able to adopt better habits, recognize their stress, and learned various strategies to manage their stress. They also reported that they were more mindful when it came to self-care and adopting healthy habits. Life101 not only teaches students the importance of taking care of themselves, but also provides them with the necessary life skills to make lasting changes in their lives.

The Ask?

At the end of the day, in spite of the positive outcomes that this course brings to our college campuses, we have limited funds to teach Life101 every quarter to the growing number of students that need this course. Limited funding means that not all students can enroll. To date, Dr. Jafari has taken on extra work and tried to accept every student in spite of capped enrollment. However, in order to continue her important work, we are asking you to help support her efforts in shaping the lives of our students. Your donations will help fund additional teaching assistants, graders, and course materials. This will make it possible for more students to learn how to deal with stress and develop the life skills needed for college and beyond. Your donation to the Center for Healthspan Sciences will support Life101 Student Access.

Please join us in our efforts to offer Life101 to as many students as possible.

Contact Us

If you’d like to learn more about Life101, please contact Dr. Mahtab Jafari at mjafari@uci.edu.