Since 2011, Dartmouth Peak Performance (DP2) has provided Dartmouth’s nearly 900 varsity student-athletes with specialized resources designed to help them perform at their best.
The Kirsten and Eugene F. “Buddy” Teevens ’79 Center for Peak Performance is taking that work beyond varsity athletics. Building on the DP2 model, the Center is making resources in leadership, mental performance, and nutrition available to students across Dartmouth.
By integrating peak-performance education into courses, workshops, and partnerships across campus, the Teevens Center aims to help students develop knowledge and skills that enhance their Dartmouth experience and prepare them to perform, lead, and thrive.
That work is already underway. In its first year of programming during the 2025-2026 academic year, the Center reached more than 500 students through partnerships with 10 campus offices. The inaugural Teevens Center Leadership Fellow residency with former GE CEO Jeff Immelt ’78 (a former football teammate of Buddy Teevens ‘79) reached an additional 500-plus students, faculty, staff, and community members. In total, the Center has reached more than 1,000 people across campus.
The Teevens Center was established through significant philanthropic support from alumni and the Dartmouth community, creating the resources to build a broader model of peak-performance education for students across campus. That support has been substantial. Nearly $32 million has been committed toward the Teevens Center’s $35 million initial endowment goal, including gifts from 26 members of the Teevens Center Founders Circle, each contributing $1 million or more. Donors have also committed nearly $2 million to the Teevens Scholars program, which provides financial aid for students who embody the values Buddy Teevens championed, along with additional support for Dartmouth football. Together, those gifts have helped create the financial foundation for the Center to expand its work across campus.
“Buddy cared about every Dartmouth student being supported to be at their personal best,” said Mike Harrity, Haldeman Family Director of Athletics and Recreation. “Our committed professionals in DP2 have supported the holistic development of our student-athletes for more than a decade, helping them grow as people, students, and athletes. The Teevens Center extends that support to students across Dartmouth, and I am excited to see all students have the opportunity to further develop the skills and habits to be healthier, stronger leaders and consistently perform at their best.”
“The Teevens Center and DP2 are complementary. We work in alignment,” says Duncan Simpson, the Teevens Center’s director. “DP2 goes deep with the varsity student-athletes, who have specific needs related to what it takes to compete at the national level, while the Teevens Center is expanding select services to all Dartmouth students.”
Buddy cared about every Dartmouth student being supported to be at their personal best. Our committed professionals in DP2 have supported the holistic development of our student-athletes for more than a decade, helping them grow as people, students, and athletes. The Teevens Center extends that support to students across Dartmouth.
Fostering Successful Cross-Campus Partnerships
The Teevens Center model builds on what Dartmouth already does well: collaboration across disciplines and campus communities. By working with campus partners, the Center can bring wellness and performance to students where they are. In its first year, the Teevens Center partnered with ten offices, centers, and schools across Dartmouth, adapting its expertise to the needs of different student communities.
The audiences ranged from leadership development with Rockefeller Leadership Fellows to performance nutrition for first-generation students and nutrition education during Ramadan, in partnership with the Tucker Center. Club sport athletes and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) students received programming in mental performance, leadership, and nutrition, with ROTC sessions co-delivered by our mental performance and nutrition staff and built around their training schedule. In addition, 45 students explored these ideas more deeply through a credit-bearing course open to all students, co-taught by the Center in collaboration with the Student Wellness Center during winter and spring terms.
This cross-campus approach works because the skills at its heart are designed to translate beyond athletics. Mental performance training, for example, can help students strengthen focus, manage distractions, regulate emotions, and perform under pressure. Techniques like intentional breathing, relaxation, and mental imagery give students practical tools they can apply in the classroom, in club or group leadership roles, and in other high-pressure situations.
Expanding What Works
Dartmouth has long required undergraduate students to earn three credits in Wellness Education. The Teevens Center now manages that requirement, giving every undergraduate student access to the Center’s programming. By embedding the Center’s work into the existing Dartmouth experience, the Center’s mission becomes part of the fabric of a Dartmouth education.
By bringing these resources into spaces and programs students are already part of, we can help more of them build these vital skills to guide them through challenges, perform at their best, and thrive at Dartmouth and beyond.
“We are excited about making these tools a part of the Dartmouth student experience,” says Jennifer Rosales, senior vice president for community and campus life and chief student affairs officer. “By bringing these resources into spaces and programs students are already part of, we can help more of them build these vital skills to guide them through challenges, perform at their best, and thrive at Dartmouth and beyond.”
The Center helps deliver two credit-bearing courses, Thriving @ Dartmouth and Mental Performance, with a nutrition course planned for spring 2027. Students and student organizations can also request programming partnerships directly from the Teevens Center.
Beyond undergraduate programming, the Center is also building partnerships with Dartmouth’s graduate and professional schools. This year, it aims to reach 75 graduate students, up from 20 last year.
Growth, however, is not the only measure of success. In surveys given after sessions, 98 percent say the experience was meaningful and relevant to them as Dartmouth students, while 92 percent say they gained knowledge or skills they expect to use in their future studies, careers, and lives. The Center is also beginning conversations with institutional research partners about how to measure longer-term changes in student performance, leadership skills, and well-being resulting from participation in DP2 programming.
The goal is not simply to offer more programming, but to build on what worked in the Center’s first year and create more consistent opportunities for students to develop skills in leadership, mental performance, and nutrition.
Building a National Model
The Teevens Center’s longer-term ambition extends beyond student programs. It is also working to build a community of research and practice around human performance at Dartmouth. “We’re not only teaching these skills,” says Simpson, “We are striving to use our wide array of institutional resources and experts across campus to build knowledge about how people perform and thrive.”
With that ambition in mind, the Center has already held three research forums for more than 200 attendees, bringing together faculty and practitioners around questions that span health, performance, and well-being. Among the topics explored were the role of mindfulness in student well-being and the classroom, how identity shapes self-belief, innovations in concussion safety, and ACL injury risk in female athletes.
The forums are also beginning to generate connections across disciplines: 93 percent of attendees reported making new collaborations. Two research studies are currently underway, a call for research grants went out in September, and an academic advisory board to guide research priorities and strengthen connections across Dartmouth’s research community.
For Simpson, one long-term measure of success is whether Dartmouth becomes nationally recognized for this work. He points to MIT Sloan’s close association with sports data and analytics as a model for what that kind of leadership can look like. The Teevens Center wants Dartmouth to become a go-to source for universities, teams, and organizations seeking to understand how people perform, lead, and thrive.
That goal is reflected in the Center’s five-year vision: to position Dartmouth as a national leader in collegiate human performance and help define how institutions promote holistic development.
Continuing Buddy’s Legacy
The Center that bears Buddy Teevens’ name carries forward something the beloved coach held dear: investing in the whole person. By extending DP2’s work beyond varsity athletics, the Teevens Center is building on Buddy's legacy while creating new opportunities for students across Dartmouth to perform, lead, and thrive — and for Dartmouth to carry that work into the world.
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