Introducing the ‘Kindness Curriculum’

• Research shows that organizations that encourage kindness have more productive and engaged employees, see lower levels of burnout, and enjoy better financial performance.
• To show students the value of prosocial behaviors in business contexts, George Mason University’s Costello College of Business began integrating a “kindness curriculum” into its Business Foundations courses.
• Educators at other institutions can jump-start kindness movements on their own campuses by designing dedicated assignments and modeling caring behaviors.

 
The professional world is waking up to the fact that promoting kindness is serious business. A raft of research studies has found that kindness is an essential ingredient for successful organizational cultures, fostering compassion among employees; encouraging prosocial behavior; and fostering trust, well-being, and inclusivity. In turn, these elements are directly linked to a host of positive business outcomes, including enhanced worker productivity and engagement, lower levels of burnout, and increased financial performance.

For business educators, such findings are perhaps doubly important. As we try to inculcate caring and compassion in the next generation of organizational leaders, we also must build and reinforce cultures of kindness within our own educational institutions.

With this understanding, we have prioritized initiatives to accomplish both objectives at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. For example, as teaching faculty within the Business Foundations area, we are incorporating kindness-based modules and exercises into the core courses in our area. These efforts, which we call our “kindness curriculum,” are designed to complement the broader-scale “Mason Chooses Kindness” (MCK) program that is ongoing in our college and university.

In a previous article in AACSB Insights, we described how Costello is taking the lead among George Mason University’s 10 academic units in implementing MCK. Below, we discuss how we deploy this curriculum, which is a key pillar of Costello’s MCK pilot program.

Kindness on the Syllabus

Our coursework in Costello’s Business Foundations area takes a holistic approach, looking at business through individual, societal, and contextual lenses. We viewed two required Business Foundations courses, in particular, as natural places to integrate kindness pedagogy into the curriculum: Developing Professional Skills I (BUS 103) and II (BUS 303).

The first course centers on cultivating awareness of what it means to be professional, as well as kickstarting long-term career planning. The second builds on these themes, with an additional emphasis on interpersonal elements such as business ethics and professional judgment. Both serve as entry points through which we can present the concept of kindness not as a warm-and-fuzzy “nice-to-have” mindset, but as an increasingly necessary part of mainstream professional practice.

Our first forays into the kindness curriculum have been deliberately meaningful yet manageable. In BUS 103, for instance, we ask students to perform small acts of kindness either toward themselves or someone else in their lives (not necessarily from the Costello community). So far, our students have performed good deeds such as tutoring struggling classmates, smiling at strangers, cooking a meal for friends, and giving money to people in need.

Afterward, we ask students to reflect in writing about how performing these acts made them feel and how it changed the way they felt about kindness. Students also think about what possible benevolent acts they might perform in the future.

In these reflections, one student wrote about helping an immigrant, who had recently arrived from Vietnam, use the self-checkout and discount apps at a local grocery store. This simple moment of humanity between two strangers prompted the student, also of Vietnamese origin, to think of her mother and the difficulties she faced in adjusting to life in the United States. To be sure, this student might have done the same good deed without the assignment. Nonetheless, our curriculum converted what could have been an automatic activity into an opportunity for serious thought about her core values and family history.

One hallmark of institutionalized kindness is an organizational culture that prizes and promotes well-being. Therefore, our learners explore what it would mean to situate kindness within a business context.

“I felt a sense of joy and gratefulness knowing that in some small way, I did make a change in someone’s life,” the student wrote. To us, this quote exemplifies the qualities of empathy and perspective-taking, which are key components of kindness in action.

As stated above, one hallmark of institutionalized kindness is an organizational culture that prizes and promotes well-being. Therefore, in BUS 303, learners explore what it would mean to situate kindness within a business context.

In this course, students research professional skills (such as the art of giving and receiving feedback, ethical reasoning and decision-making, cultural intelligence, mentorship, or leadership) necessary for today's workplace—the objective is for students to become class subject matter experts on their chosen topics. They must prepare several presentations about their subjects, with each presentation tailored for a different audience. For example, for one presentation, they were asked to write explainer articles about how well-being as a skill can enhance the George Mason University community and beyond.

Students are asked to write these articles for inclusion in the Thriving Together Series, which is published through George Mason’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being (although students can opt not to share their work outside the classroom).

One such article that appeared in the series is “Why Well-Being Increases Productivity,” written by students Jenny Bolanos, Aneeqa Tajammal, Valeria Santana, and Naser Al-Rafaih. In it, the team looks at aspects of physical, financial, and mental well-being that materially impact employee performance.

The assignment furthers several of our pedagogical goals: It increases students’ familiarity with professional tools and skills; it builds their rhetorical awareness (their ability to adapt language based on the audience, context, and purpose); and it offers them the opportunity to address the business case for kindness.

Kindness in Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is an especially important topic at the Costello College of Business and one that is regularly discussed in the classroom. With that focus as inspiration, Gretchen Hendricks, a co-author of this article, had the idea to show students how the college’s kindness curriculum could find expression in an entrepreneurial venture.

Hendricks conceived the concept for a socially conscious networking app called ThreeWishes, a platform that personalizes the giving experience through purposeful acts of kindness. Users could post requests for help from the community, and anyone able to give could fulfill the requests of others. She then asked learners in her BUS 303 course to draft a business plan that included revenue projections, operating expenses, and competitive analysis. The objective was to turn ThreeWishes into a viable early-stage venture.

As a classroom exercise, ThreeWishes was a meaningful extension of the kindness curriculum, challenging students to identify and explore market opportunities around prosocial behavior while also honing general business knowledge. Hendricks also hopes to turn the idea into reality by launching a pilot of ThreeWishes within the Costello and George Mason communities.

A ‘Kindness Curriculum’ Framework

The campuswide MCK program and Costello’s MCK pilot paved the way for the design of our curriculum. While not every academic institution will provide such a critical context, educators still can do a lot on their own to jump-start a kindness movement in their classrooms, especially within core courses such as BUS 103 and BUS 303.

To spark more conversations around this topic, we recently gave presentations at two conferences: the 2023 Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference held by George Mason University’s Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, and the 2024 Conference on the First-Year Experience held by the University of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.

During our presentations, we posed this question to attendees: “What could kindness look like in your teaching?” While they considered this, we suggested six areas where educators can expose learners to the idea via targeted modules, materials, and assignments:

Pedagogical approaches. Educators can incorporate appropriate themes and styles into classroom norms. For example, they can address the interpersonal implications of business questions to remind learners that business decisions often have consequences that resonate far beyond the walls of any one company.

In addition, educators can themselves model and highlight compassion and caring in their classrooms. For example, they might consider pausing lessons more frequently—particularly more difficult ones—to ensure that learners are keeping pace, or they might create atmospheres of psychological safety in their classrooms to diminish students’ fears of asking “dumb questions.”

Breakthroughs can happen when educators invite students to investigate the positive effects of kindness and create resources for others to use.

Dedicated content and assignments. Teachers can be on the lookout for ways to add dimensions to standard assignments. Breakthroughs can happen when educators invite students to investigate the positive effects of kindness and create resources for others to use.

For example, we know that firms that are seen as benevolent tend to enjoy stronger growth. With that in mind, students could be required to add a “kindness reputational scale” when evaluating a company’s fitness for investment.

Classroom activities and discussions. In-class projects and workshops can be ideal venues for putting kindness into practice. Even holding space for spontaneous compassionate acts can be an effective teaching tool. In our previous AACSB Insights article, we mentioned how one of Hendricks’ students dashed out of class after learning that a classmate was experiencing food insecurity, returning ten minutes later with two gift cards for that classmate. That moment likely would not have happened if Hendricks had not created space for such discussions in her course.

Student mentorship. Widespread mentorship is another characteristic of kindness-based cultures. Mentoring relationships could consist of learners exchanging expertise or educators actively guiding students on their career development paths. These relationships help cultivate a trusting and inclusive environment on campus, while promoting compassionate practices that learners will take into the workplace after they graduate.

Extracurricular activities. Putting these concepts into practice and experiencing the beneficial effects needn’t be confined to campus. After all, a growing number of learners utilize online and asynchronous options, coming on campus rarely, if at all. Like those at many other universities, students at George Mason lead busy lives that often include part-time employment in addition to their coursework. Their jobs and side hustles could serve as laboratories where they can see firsthand (and reflect upon) the changes that kind behaviors can make in professional contexts.

Of course, community service is another way for students to sample the transformative power of kindness in action. Students who have more free time can be encouraged to support causes they care about by volunteering in the community.

Research. Finally, educators can ask students to delve into scientific research about the impact of kindness. Relevant studies are virtually unanimous on the positive benefits for organizations and society, so any lingering notions that students might have about “soft,” caring approaches being out of place in business will likely disappear.

Where to Start?

Even if support for such initiatives is spotty at their academic institutions, educators still can introduce kindness on the pedagogical periphery. By simply adding kindness/inclusivity statements to their syllabi, faculty can set expectations and give students an unobtrusive introduction to the topic. Educators also can offer students opportunities for volunteering or otherwise performing caring acts as another means of positive reinforcement.

We should never forget that, as professors, we are more influential than we may think. Integrating kindness-based content into our courses—and, of course, modeling positive behaviors—will go a long way toward inspiring our students. Through such actions, we also might provide inspiration to the academic community writ large.