Rustic Pathways is the only teen travel company with peer-reviewed, independent academic research validating its approach to purpose development. The Boston College Partnership represents a commitment to measuring what matters: not just student satisfaction, but lasting developmental outcomes.
Purpose Is Not the Same as Goals
Goals can be purely self-serving: get into a good college, earn a high salary, win an award. Purpose includes both personal meaning and contribution to something larger than oneself. This distinction, drawn from Dr. Belle Liang’s work at Boston College, matters because students with purpose show better mental health outcomes, greater resilience, and stronger academic performance.
Purpose does not develop automatically. It requires the right conditions at the right time, which is why program structure matters as much as program content.
What the Study Found
The Climate Leaders Fellowship research examined how specific program components translate into developmental outcomes.
Researchers interviewed nine Climate Leaders Fellowship participants from five countries: the United States, Malaysia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, and Japan. All were between 15 and 17 years old. All had designed and completed community-based climate action projects as part of the program.
Three outcomes emerged consistently:
Students took action. The program structure used deadlines and accountability to convert good intentions into completed projects. One student implemented a recycling system across a 46-floor apartment building. Another organized a food drive that collected over 700 pounds of donations. A third built a website educating peers about fast fashion. Without the program framework, these projects would have remained ideas.
Students gained perspective. Hearing from peers in different countries altered how participants understood global issues. A student from Japan shared firsthand observations about typhoons. A student from the Dominican Republic discussed wealth inequality. These conversations produced moments participants described as putting on “glasses when you’re really blind.”
Students built confidence. Completing a project, especially one that required overcoming obstacles, increased participants’ belief in their own capacity. As one student put it: “Even though I was only 16-17 there’s still so much I can do.”
These three outcomes (action, perspective, and confidence) form the foundation of what researchers call civic purpose development. The next question: why does this particular program structure work when generic volunteering often does not?
The 4 P’s Behind Purpose Development
The 4 P’s of Purpose framework, developed by Dr. Belle Liang at Boston College, explains why certain program structures catalyze purpose while others do not:
- People: Mentors and peers who model purposeful action
- Propensities: Natural strengths that students can leverage
- Passion: Deep interests that energize sustained effort
- Prosociality: The desire to contribute beyond oneself
When all four elements converge, purpose materializes. The Climate Leaders Fellowship addresses each: global peers provide inspiration, project design matches students’ interests, climate focus aligns with participants’ values, and community-based requirements ensure prosocial outcomes.
For parents evaluating programs, the 4 P’s framework provides a concrete checklist. For educators designing curricula, it offers a research-backed architecture.
What This Means for Parents
Volunteering alone is not enough. Many teenagers complete service hours without developing lasting purpose. The difference is structure: deadlines, accountability, reflection, and connection to peers who share similar values.
Questions to consider when evaluating programs for your teenager:
- Does the program require students to design and complete their own projects?
- Is there accountability built in, or can students coast?
- Will your student interact with peers from different backgrounds and perspectives?
- Is there structured reflection, not just activity?
Programs that check these boxes are more likely to produce the developmental outcomes documented in this research. Rustic Pathways designs programs around these principles and measures outcomes through 10 Student Learning Outcomes tracked across all programs.
What This Means for Educators
The findings align with established frameworks in positive youth development and experiential learning. Kolb’s learning cycle, Freire’s concept of praxis (iterative reflection and action), and Bandura’s self-efficacy theory all appear in the research’s theoretical grounding.
For educators designing service-learning curricula, the study highlights the importance of:
- Student ownership of project design
- Peer accountability structures
- Global or cross-cultural perspectives
- Reflection that connects action to identity
The researchers describe the program as a “just-in-time intervention” for developmentally primed adolescents. Timing matters. High school students are actively forming identity and exploring values. Programs that provide scaffolding during this window can shape their trajectory toward sustained civic engagement.
A Note on Transparency
Rustic Pathways partially funded this research. The study was conducted by independent researchers at Boston College, and the funding disclosure in the published paper states that sponsors “had no role in the design, execution, interpretation, or writing of the study.”
Rustic Pathways funded the research to ensure academic rigor in curriculum development. As CEO Shayne Fitz-Coy explains: “Rustic Pathways believes in the impact young people can have on climate change. Rustic Pathways believes in the work that Boston College and Dr. Belle Liang’s Purpose Lab are doing. Bringing those forces together was a natural fit.”
The full study is available open access: Lincoln et al. (2024), Adolescents.
Learn More
- Full Research Summary: Detailed findings, methodology, and participant projects from the Boston College Partnership
- Climate Leaders Fellowship: The free program studied in this research, a 12-week partnership with Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab
- Student Learning Outcomes: How Rustic Pathways measures developmental growth, including 8 of 10 SLOs sustained at 6 months