This year, the Kirsten and Eugene F. “Buddy” Teevens ’79 Center for Peak Performance is taking on a broader role in shaping how Dartmouth students perform and thrive.
As the wellness education requirement for undergraduate students shifts to the Teevens Center’s administrative oversight, it is launching a new Mental Performance course this fall and has opened the call for applications for its first research and innovation grants to students, faculty, and staff.
For Duncan Simpson, the Teevens Center’s director, the wellness education shift is a chance to build on momentum created by the expansion of Dartmouth Peak Performance beyond serving only varsity student-athletes. The center’s flagship campuswide initiative, known as DP2 for All, extends the educational workshops to all students, encompassing undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools.
For undergraduates, pairing DP2 for All with the wellness education requirement, which carries three credits toward graduation, equips every student with a path to skills that sharpen performance. Since the center launched its first DP2 for All programming in fall term 2025, it has delivered more than 20 sessions reaching well over 350 nonvarsity students.
The positive response from participants was almost unanimous: 98% percent found it relevant to their lives, 97% percent said it made a difference, and 95% percent wanted more.
“Integrating performance and well-being education makes it a definite feature of the undergraduate experience, rather than an optional enhancement,” Simpson says.
The new eight-week Mental Performance course, led by Jill Kochanek, Moore Family Assistant Director for Leadership and Mental Performance, is one early example. The course is built around five core mental performance competencies, pairing research discussion with a mental training lab where students test strategies in real time.
Kochanek designed the course for students who may not think of themselves as performers at all to help every Dartmouth student build the skills to perform at their best, on and off the field, in the classroom, on stage, and in life beyond Dartmouth.
The idea that tools built for athletes belong to every student has also shaped the Teevens Center’s partnership with the First-Generation Office.
Jay Davis ’90, director of the office and a former varsity athlete himself, has seen the benefits of that training firsthand. “It’s exciting to give first-generation students the opportunity to benefit from decades of research that has gone into athletic performance and apply those practices to their lives,” Davis says.
That partnership grew through this year’s First-Year Summer Enrichment Program, which included an interactive mental performance workshop and a dietician-led session on fueling for success, plus new offerings like “Hacking FOCO,” which helps students navigate the dining hall, and a workshop on imposter syndrome during the first week of classes.
Funding New Ideas and Student Research
The Teevens Center is also expanding its reach by launching its research and innovation grants program, which is designed to spur interdisciplinary projects focused on human performance, leadership, and well-being. The program prioritizes collaboration, offering funding tiers for student-only teams, faculty and staff teams, and student-faculty/staff partnerships, the last of which carries the highest award ceiling. Applications are due Nov. 10, with awards announced in December.
With Teevens Center research funding support, Julia Pye ’27, who is on the varsity track and field and cross-country teams, is working with Dartmouth researchers and a group of competitive rock climbers to test a tool specifically adapted for performance anxiety. The project grew out of Pye’s own experience managing performance anxiety as a competitive runner.
“I see a need for a support tool that is available when high performers need it the most, whether that be the restless night before a competition or at the competition itself,” Pye says.
For Simpson, Pye’s project has become a proof of concept for what can happen when the Teevens Center creates opportunities to examine innovative thinking, building toward a Dartmouth where performance and well-being education touch every student as an integral part of the educational journey.
“The point isn’t to check a box. It’s to give students wellness education that actually means something to them and that they can carry past graduation,” Simpson says.
