In the 2023-2024 school year, our life design materials were used by 40 different institutions of higher education to support over 1600 faculty, students and staff in designing their lives.

Read about their experiences with our life design curricula below:

The Taylor Center Life Design resources and materials have been extraordinarily helpful in shifting our mind set in our career services work. We find the life design approach really resonates with our undergraduate, liberal arts population.

I appreciate your significant development of work related to identity, privilege, marginalized people, and economic diversity. Yours is the first I’ve seen someone adequately address these issues in life design, and I find your language and exercises to be thoughtful, balanced, and appropriately challenging.I wish I had found this work earlier in my career. Life design is incredibly insightful and the natural tie to take action toward a more aligned self is compelling!

I am the first ever College Counselor at VIS Experimental High School in Taipei, Taiwan, and my Grade 11 College Counseling class has been founded on Life Design principles. I think the Tulane Taylor Center material incredibly helpful and indispensable to my curriculum.

This is a great starting point for anyone wanting to teach the life design program. Thank you very much for sharing.

The Taylor center resources were very helpful to get me started on designing a prototyping workshop format that we’ve been able to repurposes now several times. I’ve determined that you can pack a lot in 3 hours. We’ve also started a Leadership Lab for SPs students and we’ll continue to offer Life Design programs there this fall.

The lesson plans were very comprehensive and detailed, helpful for beginner practitioner. I really appreciated all the links to related readings, resources, and videos which were all good.Thank you for providing your resources as they were a huge help in constructing this course for the first time.

Your work has literally been life changing for my students.

Case Study

Our materials supported students from EducationUSA in Kathmandu, Nepal in a six-month life design course.

Some student testimonials from the course are below: 

DYL has played the role of a mentor in my life. DYL is the best boat one can row to cross the lake of transition between high school and college life. For high school students like us who are in a state of deliberation about what steps and decisions to take in life for future endeavors, DYL classes have helped us figure out ourselves, know our strengths, weaknesses, and actual position in the world, and take decisions wisely.1600

I really liked DYL! It was refreshing because instead of just telling us what to think, it focused on teaching us how to think. It was a new and positive experience for me, and I enjoyed the class a lot.

My favorite assignment was creating three plans: top-of-mind, pivot, and constraint-free. The assignment helped me set realistic goals, be adaptable to changes, and dream big without limitations. It was an enjoyable experience that made me ready to accept and adjust to unexpected circumstances in the future.

I learned to adopt a broader perspective and analyze myself in a larger context. Instead of solely focusing on the immediate year ahead, I started looking five years into the future. This shift in mindset helped me see the potential of a gap year as a unique opportunity rather than a burden.

I realized that taking this time off could allow me to gain valuable experiences, explore different paths, and ultimately make a more informed decision about my education and future goals.