Josh Luckens interviews Nic Voge, who offers strategies for transforming fear and reframing failure in academic settings. He shares ways to design courses that emphasize student engagement and intrinsic motivation as central features in an experience of meaningful inquiry.

Nic Voge is a nationally recognized expert in teaching, learning, and student motivation, and the senior associate director of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton University. His Ted talk, Self Worth Theory: The Key to Understanding & Overcoming Procrastination, has been viewed over 2 million times. He is the co-author of the book Life Beyond Grades: Designing College Courses to Promote Intrinsic Motivation.

Voge shares how self-worth theory provides a lens into the internal human experience that empowers students and faculty to act on their most noble motivations. He offers an engaged Buddhist pedagogy which gives students autonomy and agency, empowering them to succeed in the classroom and beyond.

He discusses why curiosity helps him put aside perfectionism and find both purpose and flow in his life. Voge describes curiosity as “a place of refuge” that is both “a balm and a fuel,” which gives him energy to live out his mission of “reducing suffering in the world,” one student at a time.

Additional resources:

· Life Beyond Grades website

· Learn more about the self-worth theory of motivation

Editors: Megan Hamilton Giebert and Lorrie Weldon

(November, 2022)