By Andrew Petropulos & Liam Reilly
@liampreilly852
Springfield College seniors may be surprised to learn that they will be the last class required to complete the wellness passport core curriculum requirements to graduate. Recent changes to the core curriculum have lessened requirements for future graduating classes.
On March 3, 2025, the faculty senate voted on the removal of the passport requirement. The full faculty vote showed overwhelming support of the removal, with 103 votes in favor of its removal and only eight against the proposal, along with 10 abstaining. The motion goes into effect after this semester, meaning that seniors who have been working towards completing the Wellness Passport are still required to do so, but classes younger than the 2025 class will be unencumbered by the removal.
The passport was conceived in 2019, and was voted for approval in the same year by the General Education task force. Since then, students have been required to complete at least twenty-four hours of on-campus events that educate the physical, mental and meaning and purpose domains of wellness. According to the wellness passport informational guide, the activities are intended to “allow students to explore their mental, physical and spiritual wellness in order to become a more well-rounded student and get the most out of their time at Springfield,” and “prepares students to incorporate wellness across the lifespan.”
Under each wellness domain, students have been required to receive stamps from passport-approved events, which must be at least an hour in duration. Events include meditation or prayer sessions for the meaning and purpose domain, networking events and lectures for the mental domain and group workout sessions, like spin classes, for the physical domain.
The recent vote is not the first time changes to the Wellness Passport have been made. In 2022, the original requirement, which specified a need for at least forty-eight total stamps, was reduced to the recently accepted twenty-four stamp requirement. Similar issues were identified in this prior change, as students and faculty were concerned that the requirement did not reflect on-campus opportunities, and students were overly-stressed about their ability to satisfy the requirement.
The passport built off the required wellness courses to be taken in the first two years of a student’s time at Springfield College. The three-course wellness requirement spanning levels 100 through 300 will remain in place after removal of the passport requirement.
Lisa Bromberg- Director of Core Curriculum:
The Student: What was discussed as the primary reasons for removing the passport?
Bromberg: When you have a co-curricular requirement, tracking the completion of it becomes hard. The implementation of tracking student check-ins became too onerous and it was not something that we could maintain with consistent integrity for all of our students. The support for wellness isn’t going anywhere, but the wellness passport is going to be shifting into that curriculum for students.
The Student: Are you in support of the removal of the requirement?
Bromberg: At this time, with the resources and opinions across campus, it was the right choice to make to get rid of it as a co-curricular requirement for students. It was the right choice, and it was a tough choice, but I think ultimately it was the right one for the curriculum and our students and we still support all the wellness initiatives across campus.
Junior Taylor Desmarais:
The Student: What are your thoughts about the removal of this requirement?
Desmarais: I think it’s important to have these things, because it makes you branch out and try new things. It’s an okay decision, but I think they should maybe keep it, and have less things that you need to accomplish for it, because it can be difficult, but it is doable.
The Student: Are you in support of the removal of the requirement?
Desmarais: I think it is a good opportunity for students to branch out and not be stuck with just school sports all the time, and to be able to go to different events and try new things I guess. I think the other students in my grade will be happy. A lot of people thought it was unnecessary. I liked it, though.
Senior Grace Foster:
The Student: What are your thoughts about the removal of this requirement?
Foster: I think if they kind of rebranded it and did it in a different way it would still be beneficial to students, but I think the way it is set up now, where students don’t have enough passes to graduate and their scrambling, it does not seem very productive in their goal.
The Student: Are you in support of the removal of the requirement?
Foster: I kind of understand the decision to cancel it and get rid of it all together. I think if they had gone about it in a different way, and they had equal amounts of passes, it would be better. Their whole thing was about balance, and well-rounded students, but the events didn’t reflect that, their number of events for each category.”
Graphic by Braedan Shea/The Student