Life is full of challenges – and resilience is what helps us adapt, recover, and grow stronger through them. Our Resilience Badge provides an engaging way to develop practical, evidence-based resilience skills that support success in school, work, and everyday life.
Open to students, faculty, and staff, the Resilience Badge is especially valuable for students who want to build lifelong habits that promote academic success, personal well-being, and future career readiness. You can earn the Resilience Badge for free, through a flexible online curriculum, at your own pace. Students can also enroll in a half-semester course version – UNIV 170 or UNIV 370 – when offered.
As you complete the badge, you’ll explore research-informed strategies that can help you manage stress, navigate change, strengthen relationships, and flourish in all areas of life.
Ready to Get Started?
Whether you’re a student looking to thrive during your college experience or a faculty or staff member investing in your personal and professional well-being, the Resilience Badge offers practical tools that can strengthen your well-being in ways that last.
Click here to enroll through George Mason’s Canvas system.
Why Earn the Resilience Badge?
Building resilience can help you:
- Adapt more effectively to challenges and change.
- Develop healthy ways to manage stress.
- Strengthen emotional well-being.
- Increase self-awareness and confidence.
- Build habits that support long-term success.
- Improve your ability to thrive both personally and professionally.
Once you successfully complete the program requirements, you’ll earn a digital Resilience Badge recognizing your commitment to developing this essential life skill. You can share your badge from our partner, Credly, on professional platforms such as LinkedIn, include it in your resume or portfolio, and showcase your dedication to lifelong learning and personal growth.
Who Can Participate?
The Resilience Badge is available to all George Mason students, faculty, and staff. The badge is designed to help students develop resilience skills that support academic achievement, personal well-being, leadership, and lifelong success. Faculty and staff are also encouraged to participate. Building resilience benefits workplace well-being, professional effectiveness, and the ability to support students and colleagues.
How the Resilience Badge Works
Participants complete a series of learning activities that introduce practical resilience strategies and encourage reflection and real-world application.
The program combines evidence-based learning with opportunities to practice resilience-building habits that can be applied in everyday life.
For complete program requirements, participation details, and answers to frequently asked questions, please visit the Resilience Badge FAQ.
Badge Content
You will have the opportunity to:
- Discover what resilience is.
- Engage resilience through a growth mindset.
- Deepen your understanding of optimism to benefit resilience.
- Explore fear in the context of resilience.
- Find ways to respond to stress from a place of resilience.
The six modules will conclude with the development of an Individual Resilience Plan that will help you to think about resilience beyond this badge experience. This plan will support you in continuing to develop your resilience and leverage it to reach your goals (personal, professional, and/or academic).
By successfully completing each module, you will be able to:
- Explain the benefits of resilience.
- Define what resilience means in everyday life.
- Explain how you will use resilience to further your personal and professional growth.
Resilience Resources
Our center has developed evidence-based resilience resources that provide practical tools for strengthening well-being.
These resources cover a variety of topics to help you build resilience in everyday life:
- Find a Resilient Role Model
- Strengthen Physical Well-Being
- Cognitive Flexibility
- Active Coping Skills
- Social Networks
- Knowing and Using Our Signature Strengths
- A Personal Moral Compass
- Resilience Training
- Responding to Fear
- Optimism
Whether you’re working toward the Resilience Badge or simply looking to strengthen your well-being, these resources offer practical strategies you can start using immediately.
George Mason’s Resilience Model
George Mason’s Resilience Model represents the components of flourishing that we believe comprise a resilient human being. Resilience is the capacity for successful adaptation in the face of stress, challenge, and adversity.
Our center believes that with the appropriate resources and support, individuals, communities, and organizations can intentionally build their resilience in each of the resilience domains.
Positive emotions are a person’s brief responses when they interpret their current circumstances as good, pleasurable, or of good fortune. Positive emotions include joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love.
Social support is the degree to which a person feels they can rely on or turn to other people for support, advice, or encouragement.
Meaning in life is the extent to which a person feels their life is purposeful and how they make sense of their life and place within the world.
Coping involves a person’s response to something distressing, including their ability to manage their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
Physical well-being encompasses a person’s objective health (regular physical exercise, healthy diet, adequate sleep), and subjective health (how healthy they believe they are).
Resilience Badge Testimonials
Enjoy this playlist of video testimonials from Mason students and employees who have earned the Resilience Badge!
Read more about what students have to say in this article.