Funding Source
Philanthropy
Project Period
Spring 2025 – December 2029
Principal Investigator
Lisa A. Marsch, PhD (Evergreen Project Lead, Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth); Nicholas Jacobson, PhD (Evergreen Technical Lead, Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Departments of Biomedical Data Science, Psychiatry, and Computer Science); Michael Heinz, MD (Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Department of Psychiatry)
Other Project Staff
Other Project Leadership
Andrew Campbell, PhD (Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College)
Research Project Staff
Tess Z Griffin, PhD, MEd (Evergreen Research Project Director); Anastasia Bryan, MS (Senior Research Coordinator); Crystal Javidi, MA (Research Coordinator); Ami Patel, MEd (Research Coordinator); Jason Solinsky, MEd (Research Coordinator)
Developer Staff
Bruce Atwood (LLM Developer); Horatio Boothe (Front-End Developer); Jordan Mueller, MA (Full-Stack Developer)
Project Faculty
Lorie Loeb, MS (Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College); Sarah Preum, PhD (Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College); Thomas Thesen, PhD (Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth); Tim Tregubov, MS (Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College)
Student Project Assistants
evergreen.dartmouth.edu/team/
Project Summary
Student wellness and success is a priority for college campuses worldwide. Students today navigate a wide range of academic, social, and personal commitments, often balancing coursework, extracurricular involvement, leadership roles, relationships, and career exploration. To make the most of their college experience, many students set high expectations for themselves, which can contribute to stress or feelings of pressure. At Dartmouth, the academic rigor, rural location, and fast-paced quarter system can further contribute to challenges related to time management and mental health.
Dartmouth faculty have previously examined these challenges through several key projects: StudentLife (led by Dr. Andrew Campbell), which used passive sensing to examine patterns between sleep, activity, social interaction, and mental health; and Therabot (led by Dr. Nicholas Jacobson and Dr. Michael Heinz), the first AI-powered mental health chatbot, which demonstrated large treatment effects for depression and anxiety. Furthermore, Dr. Lisa Marsch developed the first prescription digital therapeutic in the US, bringing deep expertise in creating digital solutions for behavioral health.
Building on this foundation, Evergreen is a personalized AI platform designed to support student flourishing at Dartmouth. By integrating passive sensing data, the platform identifies patterns in a student’s sleep, activity, stress, and social engagement to provide timely, tailored support. Grounded in evidence-based interventions from educational psychology, positive psychology, CBT, and DBT, Evergreen will offer practical guidance that serves as both a self-guided resource and a bridge to existing campus resources. The platform is designed to reflect the lived experiences of Dartmouth undergraduate students, with over 250 Dartmouth undergraduates shaping the app’s design, development, and content.
Research to effectively evaluate the Evergreen platform will progress through two phases:
1. The first iteration of the Evergreen platform will center on a pre-scripted chatbot. We will begin with a usability and feasibility phase with 10 – 15 Dartmouth undergraduate students. In the second phase, a larger randomized controlled trial with 198 students will be conducted to assess platform usability, acceptance, engagement, and effectiveness.
2. The second iteration of the Evergreen platform will employ a generative AI chatbot with 600 undergraduates to assess usability, engagement, and effectiveness of a personalized flourishing tool on Dartmouth’s campus.
Public Health Relevance
Dartmouth students navigate interconnected social, health, academic, and financial pressures. The goal of Evergreen is to enable student flourishing by providing a personalized AI-driven platform that integrates behavioral data with evidence-based interventions to support students throughout their undergraduate journey. By delivering timely, context-aware support and connecting students to campus resources, Evergreen aims to strengthen student resilience, improve flourishing, and provide accessible wellness support across the entire Dartmouth undergraduate student body.