Circadian Coaching and Student Flourishing: Lessons From a Two-University Pilot

Lessons from a two-university pilot: feasibility, engagement, and student-reported academic performance from Owaves’ 2018–2020 coaching program at the University of San Diego and San Diego State University — and how it set the stage for a randomized trial of student flourishing.

Lauren Serpico, Ph.D. · Gayle Valensky, MPH · Royan Kamyar, M.D.
Owaves, Inc., Encinitas, California · Correspondence: royan@owaves.com

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Executive Summary

College students are struggling with a set of problems that are usually treated separately — anxiety and stress, poor sleep, skipped meals, inconsistent exercise, and days that feel unmanageable — but that are tightly connected in time. Between November 2018 and 2020, Owaves ran a beta coaching program at the University of San Diego (USD) and San Diego State University (SDSU) to test a different approach: teach students to design each day around their body clock, using the Owaves visual day-planning app together with a multidisciplinary team of human coaches, including a physician, a registered dietitian, and two Olympic athletes.

Roughly 300 students expressed interest at campus recruitment events. Program records indicate 55 students enrolled across iterative small-group waves between November 2018 and October 2019; the program’s master tracking database contains complete individual-level records for the 25 students in the November 2018 – May 2019 waves, and those records form the demographic and engagement analyses in this report. Engagement was strong: 15 of 22 rated students (68%) showed high engagement, only one student formally withdrew, and in the Spring 2019 cohort more than 80% of students attended at least five of six group sessions. Every student who completed exit feedback said they would recommend the program to friends — and reported that they already had.

Students described concrete, durable changes: consistent bedtimes their bodies adapted to, eating breakfast for the first time, genuinely restful downtime replacing screen time, and better focus and retention in class. The headline finding is simple: there is a strong, healthy appetite among college students for body-clock-based lifestyle coaching — and it works best when it fits the rhythms of campus life. The pilots point to three ways to build it in: reward time spent learning self-care through a credit-bearing wellness course; make peer support always-on; and use AI to deliver expert-level lifestyle guidance to every student, on demand. Whether this framework moves the needle on student flourishing is no longer a rhetorical question: it is the registered primary focus of an independent randomized controlled trial at UC San Diego (NCT07410585), described in Future Directions.

The program at a glance

Setting	University of San Diego (USD) and San Diego State University (SDSU)
Period	November 2018 – 2020; core coaching waves November 2018 – October 2019
Model	Owaves circadian day-planning app + weekly multidisciplinary human coaching + peer support, in 90-day cycles
Interest	≈300 students expressed interest at campus recruitment events
Enrollment	55 students across iterative waves of ~5 (program records)
Documented cohort	25 students with complete individual-level records (18 USD, 7 SDSU) — basis of Tables 1–2
Engagement	68% of rated students highly engaged (4–5 of 5); 1 formal withdrawal; >80% attended ≥5 of 6 sessions in Spring 2019
Feedback	100% of exit-feedback respondents would recommend the program — and already had
Key takeaway	Strong student appetite for body-clock coaching. The next chapter builds it into campus life: a credit-bearing wellness course, always-on peer support, and AI-guided expert coaching

Background: A Time Problem Hiding Inside a Wellness Crisis

The mental health of college students has deteriorated over the past decade, with rising rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and hopelessness documented in national surveillance data.² Campus counseling centers face demand they cannot meet, and students report barriers to traditional care including stigma, long wait times, and limited capacity.⁷ At the same time, the behavioral foundations of wellbeing are eroding: an estimated 49–62% of college students qualify as poor sleepers, and most sleep less than the recommended seven to nine hours per night.^1,3

These problems are usually addressed one at a time — a sleep workshop here, a nutrition flyer there, a meditation app somewhere else. But circadian science suggests they are coupled. When students sleep, eat, exercise, study, and rest at irregular times, the body’s internal clock is disrupted, with downstream effects on mood, appetite regulation, cognition, and metabolic health.^4–6 Irregular timing is not a side effect of student stress; it is one of its engines — and it carries a measurable academic cost: in learning-analytics data covering 3.4 million university logins, circadian misalignment (“social jet lag”) correlated with lower academic performance.¹² Student wellbeing, in other words, sits upstream of the outcomes campuses track most closely: academic performance, retention, progress toward graduation, and the size of the at-risk list.

Digital interventions can reach students at scale, and the evidence is encouraging but conditional: reviews find that digital programs improve depression, anxiety, and psychological wellbeing most reliably when they are paired with human support such as coaching, and that engagement and real-world uptake — not efficacy in the lab — are the persistent failure points.^7–9 Health and wellness coaching itself has a substantial evidence base for behavior change,¹⁰ and social accountability is among the most powerful known levers on health behavior.¹¹ What has been missing is a program that ties these threads together for college students: a practical, holistic intervention organized around the timing of the whole day rather than any single behavior.

The Owaves beta coaching program was built to test exactly that. This paper reports what happened when it ran at two San Diego universities, what students said it changed for them, what we learned about delivering it, and how those learnings are shaping what comes next. It is reported as what it is — a feasibility and acceptability pilot with student-reported outcomes — and its claims are calibrated accordingly.

The Owaves Circadian Coaching Model

The app: a visual body clock

Owaves is a visual day planner grounded in circadian rhythm science. At the time of the pilots it ranked #1 for the keyword “wellness” in the Apple App Store. Rather than a list of tasks, the app presents the day as a 24-hour circle — a body clock — onto which students map sleep, meals, exercise, work and study, relaxation, and social time (Figure 1). The proportions of the day become visible at a glance: a student can see, not just know, that work is crowding out sleep or that “relaxation” has quietly disappeared. Students design an “ideal day,” save and repeat plans, sync with their calendars, and share plans with peers for encouragement.

The coaches: a multidisciplinary expert team

Students had access to a coaching team whose credentials would be difficult for any individual student to assemble: a physician specializing in circadian health and sleep, Royan Kamyar, M.D.; a registered dietitian with more than nine years of clinical experience, Lori Beeken, MS, R.D.; a two-time Olympic 800m runner and eight-time national champion, Khadevis Robinson, OLY; an Olympic triathlon silver medalist, Michellie Jones, OLY; a licensed acupuncturist and registered yoga instructor, Drisana Carey, L.Ac., RYT; and an osteopathic physician with a Master of Public Health, Regan Stiegmann, D.O., MPH. A certified personal trainer and doctoral researcher, Lauren Serpico, Ph.D. served as the program’s “quarterback coach,” coordinating scheduling, communications, and one-on-one mentorship.

Coaching ran on a weekly rhythm. Group sessions of 30–60 minutes — primarily via Zoom, with select in-person sessions on campus — rotated among coaches and followed themed curricula: “Munching on Macros,” “Food for Thought,” and “Think Before You Drink” (nutrition); “Sleep Hygiene 101” and “Got Rhythm?” (sleep and circadian science); “The Power of Visualization” and “Curating Creativity” (motivation); and “Mind Your Media” (mindful technology use). Individual sessions of 30–45 minutes covered onboarding, goal-setting, and iterative refinement of each student’s day plan. Coaching was deliberately contextual: the dietitian taught strategies for campus dining halls, dorm kitchens, and student budgets; the Olympians built workout structures around campus gym schedules and class blocks; and before finals week, the program’s acupuncturist and yoga instructor led an on-campus stress-management session.

The structure: 90-day cycles, small waves, peer accountability

Each student’s experience ran as a 90-day cycle beginning with an individual onboarding session, in which the student named their top health and wellness goals, described their current routine, designed an ideal day in the app, and chose a motivational image for the center of their circle. The Japanese concept of ikigai (“reason for being”) was introduced to connect daily routines to deeper personal values, and students who opted in received nightly text reminders at their personal target bedtime. Enrollment ran in waves of roughly five students so coaches could give focused attention, and peer accountability was built in through small cohorts, a group messaging channel, and the app’s social features. Participation was voluntary and free; students signed a waiver and an informed-consent acknowledgment making clear the program provided lifestyle coaching, not medical care.

Pilot Design, Participants, and Data

The program was run as a beta trial and quality-improvement initiative rather than under a formal IRB protocol, and this report is framed accordingly: as an evaluation of feasibility, acceptability, and student-reported outcomes, not causal efficacy. Recruitment ran through campus events (including two USD Alcalá Bazaar events, Meet the Marketers, and Torero Networking Night), athletic-department partnerships, email blasts, club outreach, peer referral, and online postings. Interested students were invited to group onboarding sessions on a rolling basis.

Table 1 reports the participant funnel with explicit denominators. Approximately 300 students expressed interest across recruitment events. Program records indicate 55 students enrolled across the iterative waves run between November 2018 and October 2019. The master tracking database — the program’s single source of truth for onboarding dates, demographics, goals, and engagement — contains complete individual-level records for 25 of these students, covering the November 2018 through May 2019 waves; records for later 2019–2020 waves are less complete, so all individual-level analyses below are restricted to the fully documented cohort of 25. We report this restriction openly rather than mixing verified and unverified records.

Table 1. Participant funnel	n	Source
Expressed interest at recruitment events (2018–2019)	≈300	2019 program report
Enrolled across iterative waves (Nov 2018 – Oct 2019)	55	Program records
Complete individual-level records (Nov 2018 – May 2019 waves) — analytic cohort	25	Master tracking database
Engagement-rated on 5-point internal scale	22	Master tracking database
Formal withdrawals	1	Master tracking database

Within the analytic cohort of 25, students spanned first-years through doctoral candidates and a wide range of majors (Table 2). Consistent with campus wellness programming generally, women enrolled at roughly twice the rate of men. At enrollment, the most common goal themes among the 17 students with recorded goals (multiple themes per student allowed) were daily structure and time management (16), nutrition and meal planning (12), exercise consistency (8), sleep (8), stress and mental health (3), and energy, focus, or productivity (2). Several students named motivating circumstances including anxiety, a family history of diabetes, and the transition out of varsity athletics.

Table 2. Documented cohort (n = 25)	Total	USD (18)	SDSU (7)
Gender
Female	17	12	5
Male	8	6	2
Academic level
First-year	5	4	1
Sophomore	4	2	2
Junior	4	4	0
Senior (incl. 4th/5th year)	10	6	4
Graduate / doctoral	2	2	0
Field of study
Business, marketing & communication	15	9	6
Life & health sciences	5	5	0
Engineering	2	2	0
Arts, design & other	3	2	1

Feasibility was assessed through enrollment, attendance (tracked weekly across coaches), engagement ratings, retention, and completion. Acceptability and student-reported outcomes were assessed through coach session notes maintained by the physician lead and program coordinator, and through a structured six-question exit feedback instrument covering motivation, goals, biggest change, most valuable element, willingness to recommend, and open insights. Feedback letters were analyzed thematically by behavioral domain.

Findings

Feasibility and engagement

The wave model worked. Small cohorts let coaches give genuinely individual attention while the program ran continuously across the academic year, and rolling admissions absorbed students whose schedules shifted mid-semester. Of the 22 students with engagement ratings on the program’s five-point scale, 15 (68%) were rated highly engaged (4 or 5), with a median rating of 4. Exactly one student formally withdrew — citing a schedule too busy to accommodate coaching sessions, a point we return to below. In the Spring 2019 cohort, program records show more than 80% of students attended at least five of six group sessions plus a final presentation, a strong retention figure for a voluntary extracurricular program.

Engagement also compounded — and much of the compounding ran through peers. The program’s virtual peer-support channel proved genuinely useful: coaches and students shared tips and insights between sessions, posted reminders for campus wellness events, and celebrated one another’s wins. Two SDSU participants went on to support later waves as interns, several students recruited roommates and friends, and near the end of the spring semester two first-year participants co-led a peer coaching session for their cohort — an early, unprompted demonstration of the peer-mentorship model the program had hoped to seed.

What students reported changing

Sleep and the body clock. The clearest single behavior change was bedtime consistency. Morgan, a doctoral student, set a firm 10:30 pm bedtime in her day plan and followed it until, in her words, her body “would become tired at my set bedtime” — the physiological signature of an entrained circadian rhythm. Other students adopted wind-down routines, blue-light-blocking software, and the opt-in bedtime text reminders; one sophomore varsity athlete targeted a 9:00 pm – 6:30 am schedule to match his self-identified morning productivity and worked with coaches on the screen-time habits that had been keeping him up.

Nutrition and meal timing. Two first-year students independently reported the same milestone: eating breakfast regularly for the first time. Fatima credited the coaching’s personalization — “with the coach’s help I was able to find foods that worked for me in the morning” — while Anna described a broader shift toward balanced meals, more vegetables and lean protein, and smarter substitutions that “didn’t feel like harsh sacrifices.” Coaching notes document students adopting consistent eating windows, weekly meal preparation, and dining-hall strategies in place of reactive eating (one junior’s stated starting point: “a protein bar for dinner”).

Mental health and stress. Students described the day plan itself as an anxiety intervention. Anna, who enrolled hoping to mitigate anxiety symptoms, explained that planning one day at a time counteracted her tendency to fixate on the future, and that the visual circle surfaced problems she “wouldn’t have otherwise noticed” — including that what she had counted as relaxation was actually screen time. Replacing it with reading outdoors, meditation, and de-stressing showers, she reported, “immensely helped my mental health.” In group sessions, students celebrated falling weekly screen-time reports and described disconnecting from devices as reconnecting with themselves.

Exercise. Students who had been “too busy” to exercise found that time-blocking workouts like classes made them happen. The Olympic coaches supplied both structure and a motivational frame — sessions repeatedly returned to finding your “why” — and peer pairing proved especially effective: two first-years built a standing routine of walking straight from morning class to the campus gym together, holding each other accountable through low-motivation stretches.

Time management and academics. The program’s academic value came through sleep and structure rather than study hacks. Morgan reported that ending “crazy hours” of late-night studying let her “complete more tasks and retain more information in class.” Fatima articulated why the approach sticks: planned changes “feel less imposing because it is planned in your day… It slowly establishes the healthy patterns until it is the norm rather than the goal.” Students also learned to schedule free time deliberately — one sophomore’s enrollment goal was, verbatim, “how to have free time!” — trading vague busyness for protected recovery.

In their own words

Three students completed detailed feedback letters at the end of their cycles; they are reproduced in full in Appendix A and are, in our view, the most compelling single artifact of the program. Every feedback respondent said they would recommend Owaves to friends, and each reported having already done so. Representative excerpts:

The coaches and app provided me with new strategies, tools, and support… Owaves was the extra motivating factor I needed to set goals and achieve them. The biggest gain for me was my ability to stop studying crazy hours and get to bed at 10:30 pm… I was able to complete more tasks and retain more information in class with this change.

Morgan, doctoral student, USD

Access to the coaches is the most valuable part… having a registered dietitian or an Olympic trainer tell you what to do and what not to do compared to what you think you should do is really helpful.

Anna, first-year student, USD

It makes changes to a daily schedule feel less imposing because it is planned in your day and all you have to do is follow what is in the schedule. It slowly establishes the healthy patterns until it is the norm rather than the goal.

Fatima, first-year student, USD

What We Learned About Running It

Beyond student outcomes, the pilots were an operating laboratory, and four learnings shaped everything Owaves has built since.

Interest is easy; conversion is hard. Hundreds of students signed up at tabling events, but converting interest into onboarded participants was the program’s steepest funnel drop — at one event, roughly 89 contacts yielded two enrollments. The lesson: campus wellness programs cannot rely on enthusiasm at a booth; they need near-zero-friction onboarding in the moment the student is motivated.

Scheduling was the persistent barrier. Variable class schedules, work shifts, labs, practices, and coach availability made finding consistent session times the hardest operational problem in the program — it drove our only withdrawal and was the most common reason invited students never completed onboarding. A support model gated on synchronous appointments structurally limits who can benefit.

Structure beats improvisation. The delivery model improved measurably as it evolved from informal “office hours” into a rotating thematic curriculum aligned with the Owaves life categories, delivered on a predictable weekly rhythm with rolling admissions and a single “quarterback” coach coordinating the student experience. That codified curriculum — the session decks, onboarding protocol, and coaching heuristics — became a durable program asset.

Peers multiply coaches. Accountability partnerships formed organically and were among the strongest engagement forces we observed, consistent with the social-network literature on health behavior.¹¹ The virtual peer channel carried the program between sessions, program graduates volunteered as peer coaches and interns, and students recruited their friends. Expert time is scarce; peer energy is abundant — the design question is how to organize it.

What Comes Next: Building Circadian Coaching Into Campus Life

The pilots’ headline finding is the appetite itself: hundreds of students raised their hands, those who enrolled stayed, and every student who gave exit feedback had already recommended the program to friends. The harder question is delivery — how a campus offers expert, whole-day lifestyle coaching to thousands of students rather than 25 at a time, without asking anyone to schedule one more appointment. The pilots point to three mutually reinforcing pathways.

1. Put self-care on the transcript: a credit-bearing wellness course

The scheduling barrier has an elegant institutional solution: make wellness part of the schedule. In July 2019, building directly on the beta trial, the Owaves team presented USD with a proposal for a one-credit undergraduate course, “Introduction to Wellness: Prioritize You” — a 14-week curriculum in which students learn the basics of lifestyle medicine from the same expert faculty who coached the pilots (circadian rhythm and sleep, campus nutrition, mindful media use, exercise, stress management, and finding your “why”), with a capstone in which each student designs and presents their “ideal day.” In this hybrid model, the classroom supplies what a screen cannot — a professor, a room full of peers, and the gravity of a course — while the Owaves app serves as the modern textbook and laboratory: students apply each week’s lesson to their own schedule, measure their own behavior, and learn from their own data as citizen scientists of their own lives.

The precedents for this approach are striking. At Yale, Laurie Santos’ “Psychology and the Good Life” became the most popular course in the university’s 300-plus-year history, enrolling nearly a quarter of undergraduates in a single semester.¹³ That same fall — the very month the first USD wave onboarded — students writing in the Columbia Daily Spectator called on their university to create exactly this: a one-credit, pass/fail wellness class teaching learning skills, mental health, and nutrition to first-years, arguing that a proactive course could “prevent mental health crises before they begin.”¹⁴ And at UC San Diego, the Learning Sustainable Well-Being program — founded by psychologist Karen Dobkins, who now co-leads the randomized trial of the Owaves app — offers one-unit, pass/no-pass wellbeing courses that are expanding across the university’s schools and departments, with plans for future “life skills” courses on topics including physical health.¹⁵ Students, in short, will register for this. The course format rewards them — with credit — for scheduling time to learn self-care, and it reaches students before they become at-risk rather than after.

2. Make peer support always-on

Peer accountability was the pilots’ quiet engine: gym partners who walked from class to workout together, a group channel where coaches and classmates traded tips and event reminders, first-years co-leading a coaching session, graduates returning as interns. This is consistent with decades of evidence that health behaviors spread through social networks,¹¹ and it is the most cost-effective force a campus program can recruit — peer energy is abundant even where expert time is scarce.

The design opportunity is to make that support always-on. Owaves is building toward this with My Moai, the app’s peer-circle feature — named for the Okinawan tradition of lifelong support groups — which points toward AI-assisted matching of classmates and teammates by chronotype and preferred study, workout, and meal times; syncing small groups around real-world campus activities, from a morning gym session to the school basketball game; and timely, personalized nudges that help students keep one another accountable to their own stated health, wellness, and productivity goals. Structured well, peer circles function as a mental-health safety layer woven through the student body itself — one that is inexpensive to operate, deepens real-world connection rather than replacing it, and notices when a classmate goes quiet.

3. Put an expert coach in every pocket: AI guidance across the lifestyle-medicine domains

The pilots surfaced a productive tension: students told us the expert coaches were the most valuable part of the program, and the operational record told us that scheduling those same coaches was the biggest barrier to participating. AI resolves that tension — not by replacing the professor or the peers, but by making expert-level guidance available in the moments between them. Owaves has codified the pilots’ curricula, onboarding protocol, and coaching heuristics into BodyClock AI™, which delivers personalized, circadian-based guidance across the core lifestyle-medicine domains — love and social connection; nutrition; movement; stress management, relaxation, and recovery; and sleep and rest — with the body clock as the organizing frame. There are no sessions to schedule and no waitlists: support is available at 2 pm between classes or 1 am before an exam, to every student rather than a lucky few. In the hybrid model above, the AI is the textbook that talks back.

We state plainly what this claim is and is not. The pilots reported here evaluated human-delivered coaching; the AI coach inherits its content and philosophy but is a distinct intervention whose outcomes must be evaluated on their own terms — which is precisely what the independent UC San Diego randomized trial, described below, is now doing.

These three pathways are strongest together, and our recommendation to campuses is to treat them as one system: the course provides the anchor and the credit incentive, solving the scheduling problem by putting wellness on the schedule; peer circles provide the daily engagement engine inside and after the course; and AI provides the expert layer between human touchpoints — with validated measures of flourishing, academic performance, and retention instrumented from day one, so every cohort strengthens the evidence base.

Limitations

This was a beta program and quality-improvement initiative, and its evidence should be read as such. There was no control group, so observed changes cannot be causally attributed to the program. Outcomes are student-reported, drawn from coaching notes and exit feedback rather than validated instruments or objective measurement, and students who completed exit feedback are likely the most engaged participants, introducing selection bias. The documented analytic cohort is small (n = 25) and concentrated at USD; records for later 2019–2020 waves are incomplete, which is why enrollment (55) and the analytic cohort (25) are reported as distinct denominators rather than blended. Participants self-selected into a wellness program in a single metropolitan area, limiting generalizability, and the program predates the pandemic-era disruptions to student life. These limitations are the standard profile of a feasibility pilot; they define, rather than diminish, the appropriate next step — controlled evaluation with validated measures.

What This Means for Campus Leaders

For student affairs and wellness administrators, the pilots demonstrate a preventive layer that sits upstream of counseling: a structured program students voluntarily join, stay in, and recommend, addressing the daily-routine drivers of distress before they become clinical demand — and before struggling students surface on an at-risk list. It complements counseling capacity rather than competing with it, and the course-plus-peers-plus-AI model removes the staffing and scheduling constraints that make purely appointment-based programs hard to scale.

For student health services and insurance partners, the relevant signal is behavioral: consistent sleep, regular meals, and routine physical activity are foundational to the conditions that drive utilization. Whether a circadian coaching layer reduces downstream demand is a hypothesis these pilots cannot answer — but it is now a testable one, and the model’s low marginal cost per student makes the economics of testing it attractive.

For faculty and academic leaders, the most striking student reports concerned academic performance: better retention of course material, less last-minute cramming, and steadier focus, achieved not through study techniques but through sleep and daily structure — and the credit-bearing course pathway gives departments a concrete, familiar vehicle for offering it. For presidents, provosts, and trustees, the program offers a wellbeing initiative aimed at the outcomes boards actually track — student flourishing, retention, and progress toward graduation — with a visible evidence pipeline: pilot data in hand, an independent randomized trial underway (below), and a delivery model priced for full-campus deployment rather than a lucky few. And for students and parents, the appendix of this report is the honest pitch: three students, in their own words, describing days that finally fit.

Future Directions

The USD/SDSU pilots were the first campus evidence base for circadian coaching; the work has continued on two tracks. First, a 2024–2025 program at UC San Diego characterized present-day student demand for circadian-aligned coaching and is described in a companion report. Second, and most significantly, an independent randomized controlled trial sponsored by UC San Diego — “Testing the Effectiveness of an Intervention That Aligns Circadian Rhythm With Daily Activities on Student Flourishing” (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT07410585) — began in January 2026, randomizing undergraduates to use of the Owaves BodyClock AI app with outcomes centered on student flourishing: mood, happiness, focus, and energy, with secondary outcomes including sleep quality, circadian alignment, and academic performance.¹⁷ Enrollment closed in April 2026 at 795 undergraduates — nearly double the original target of 400 — a demand signal in its own right, and initial results are expected later in 2026.¹⁶ Planning documents for the research program identify campus-level endpoints — GPA, retention, and progress toward graduation — as candidate extensions. Alongside the trial, priorities include piloting the credit-bearing course and My Moai peer circles with partner campuses, objective adherence data from the app itself, and cost-effectiveness analysis against existing campus wellness spending.

References

1. Lund HG, Reider BD, Whiting AB, Prichard JR. Sleep patterns and predictors of disturbed sleep in a large population of college students. J Adolesc Health. 2010;46(2):124–132.
2. American College Health Association. National College Health Assessment III: Reference Group Executive Summary, Fall 2022. Silver Spring, MD: ACHA; 2023.
3. Becker SP, Jarrett MA, Luebbe AM, et al. Sleep in a large, multi-university sample of college students: sleep problem prevalence, sex differences, and mental health correlates. Sleep Health. 2018;4(2):174–181.
4. Walker WH, Walton JC, DeVries AC, Nelson RJ. Circadian rhythm disruption and mental health. Transl Psychiatry. 2020;10(1):28.
5. Longo VD, Panda S. Fasting, circadian rhythms, and time-restricted feeding in healthy lifespan. Cell Metab. 2016;23(6):1048–1059.
6. Chaput JP, Dutil C, Featherstone R, et al. Sleep timing, sleep consistency, and health in adults: a systematic review. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2020;45(10 Suppl 2):S232–S247.
7. Ferrari M, Allan S, Arnold C, et al. Digital interventions for psychological well-being in university students: systematic review and meta-analysis. J Med Internet Res. 2022;24(9):e39686.
8. Lattie EG, Adkins EC, Winquist N, et al. Digital mental health interventions for depression, anxiety, and enhancement of psychological well-being among college students: systematic review. J Med Internet Res. 2019;21(7):e12869.
9. Fleming T, Bavin L, Lucassen M, Stasiak K, Hopkins S, Merry S. Beyond the trial: systematic review of real-world uptake and engagement with digital self-help interventions for depression, low mood, or anxiety. J Med Internet Res. 2018;20(6):e199.
10. Sforzo GA, Kaye MP, Todorova I, et al. Compendium of the health and wellness coaching literature. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2018;12(6):436–447.
11. Christakis NA, Fowler JH. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. N Engl J Med. 2007;357(4):370–379.
12. Smarr BL, Schirmer AE. 3.4 million real-world learning management system logins reveal the majority of students experience social jet lag correlated with decreased performance. Sci Rep. 2018;8:4793.
13. Yale News. Yale’s most popular class ever to be available via Coursera. February 20, 2018.
14. Mental Health Action Committee. Columbia should create a mental health and wellness class. Columbia Daily Spectator. November 15, 2018.
15. Poppel M. A new kind of college course: learning ‘how to be human.’ UC San Diego Today. September 25, 2025.
16. Owaves, Inc. Owaves nearly doubles enrollment target in first prospective randomized clinical trial with UC San Diego. April 23, 2026.
17. ClinicalTrials.gov. Testing the Effectiveness of an Intervention That Aligns Circadian Rhythm With Daily Activities on Student Flourishing. Identifier NCT07410585. Sponsor: University of California, San Diego. Study start: January 2026; enrollment closed April 2026 (N = 795).

Data and methods note: Enrollment, attendance, and engagement figures reflect Owaves program records (recruitment reports, attendance logs, and the master tracking database). Student quotations are drawn verbatim from written feedback letters and program documentation. Featured students are referred to by pseudonym to maintain privacy. All other participants are described by role only.

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Appendix A. Participant Feedback Letters (unedited)

The three letters below were completed by participants at the end of their coaching cycles using the program’s structured feedback instrument. They are reproduced verbatim (including original phrasing) and shared with the students’ permission; pseudonyms are used and fields of study are withheld to maintain privacy.

Anna’s Feedback Letter — first-year student, USD

1. What is your primary motivation to participate in Owaves?
To improve my overall wellness in terms of physical and psychological health; and to create a more balanced, manageable day-to-day schedule.

2. What are your biggest health and wellness goals? How does Owaves help you achieve them?
My biggest health and wellness goal is first and foremost to mitigate my symptoms of anxiety. The problem with anxiety is that most people fixate on the future, but with Owaves specifically planning one day at a time, and using the resources to track and manage what proportion of the day is spent on various activities, I have seen an incredible change. Things that I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed being problematic–not getting to sleep when I should, or when the most prevalent thing in my schedule is work–have become evident and are more easily adjusted. I noticed that I almost never had relaxation when I began Owaves, what I thought was my “relaxation” time was always filled with games or a screen, and being able to see that those are not the same, and change that to sitting outside and reading a book, or doing a mindful meditation, or taking a de-stressing shower, have all immensely helped my mental health.

3. What is the one biggest change you’ve made thanks to Owaves? Please describe in as much detail as possible.
My eating habits have been the biggest change. Not only do I now always eat breakfast (something I never did before) but I also eat much “healthier.” My diet is much more balanced, I eat way more vegetables and lean protein, I make smarter food choices about what I eat, like eating almonds as a snack instead of potato chips. I eat at least one salad a day and I love it. I eat much better without having to compromise a lot. If I want a burger, I just order a turkey burger; if I want a cup of coffee, I order a regular coffee and add cream and sugar myself, rather than ordering a fancy drink that is packed with artificial syrups and processed sugars.

4. What is the most valuable part about Owaves? Please be specific.
Access to the coaches is the most valuable part, in my opinion. Because of the latest trend and fad diets, a lot of misleading information is out there, but having a registered dietician or an Olympic trainer tell you what to do and what not to do compared to what you think you should do is really helpful and can definitely open your eyes to the problems of the media.

5. Would you recommend Owaves to your friends? If so, why? If not, why not?
I definitely would, and have, because of the positive changes that it has brought to my life and my best friend’s life; but in Owaves, people have to be willing to take advise and understand that their habits can be improved. Some of my friends did not want to do Owaves because they said they “don’t like being told what to do or how to do it.” The Owaves community is very supportive in self-improvement and everyone works together as a team to accomplish goals, but I suppose the program is not for everyone, namely the prideful ones.

6. Any other recommendations you have or insights you have learned thanks to Owaves?
I learned that everyone’s wellness journey is specific to them, and it takes time to see changes, especially when there are multiple things to fix. Going to bed at an earlier time every day for a week would be easy to see overall improvement quickly. But going to the gym is a longer process and you don’t necessarily see improvements in time, strength, or agility right away. Same with eating healthy. We can feel good about ourselves after eating a salad, but to notice more energy and a better mood takes a little while.

Fatima’s Feedback Letter — first-year student, USD

1. What is your primary motivation to participate in Owaves?
I wanted to understand how I was spending my time and use that knowledge to see where I could improve my days. Now it is more so to plan my days and make sure that I am getting designated time to do the things I otherwise might forget to do. These are things like eat and see friends during the day.

2. What are your biggest health and wellness goals? How does Owaves help you achieve them?
One of the biggest goals I had going into the beta trial was to eat more regularly and be more regimented with my sleep schedule. Owaves allows me to prioritize making time for those things and lets me make sure I will have room in my day to get them done.

3. What is the one biggest change you’ve made thanks to Owaves? Please describe in as much detail as possible.
Since starting Owaves I have started to eat breakfast on a regular basis. This was in big part to the coaching that came with the beta trial and how it was able to be personalized to my situation. With the coaches help I was able to find foods that worked for me in the morning and gradually was able to make a bigger change that has since become a normal for me.

4. What is the most valuable part about Owaves? Please be specific.
I think the most valuable part of Owaves is how it makes changes to a daily schedule feel less imposing because it is planned in your day and all you have to do is follow what is in the schedule. It slowly establishes the healthy patterns until it is the norm rather than the goal.

5. Would you recommend Owaves to your friends? If so, why? If not, why not?
I would, and have, recommend Owaves to my friends because I believe that it has the ability to help people make the changes they want to their lives on the day to day.

6. Any other recommendations you have or insights you have learned thanks to Owaves?
I don’t believe I have any other recommendations.

Morgan’s Feedback Letter — doctoral student, USD

1. What is your primary motivation to participate in Owaves?
Time management and maximization of the time available to me.

2. What are your biggest health and wellness goals? How does Owaves help you achieve them?
To be physically fit, and spiritually sound. Owaves provided me with the visual plan for my daily living activities.

3. What is the one biggest change you’ve made thanks to Owaves? Please describe in as much detail as possible.
With Owaves I was able to set a bedtime and follow it. Following my Owaves schedule daily allowed my body to become acclimated to the new regimen. After a while my body followed the natural history and would become tired at my set bedtime.

4. What is the most valuable part about Owaves? Please be specific.
The coaches were a very valuable part of Owaves. Their expertise enhanced my health and wellness goals. The coaches tailored their information to fit many different lifestyles.

5. Would you recommend Owaves to your friends? If so, why? If not, why not?
Yes. Owaves is useful for all lifestyles. The app really helps to reinforce accountability.

6. Any other recommendations you have or insights you have learned thanks to Owaves?
I am impressed with the services offered by Owaves. Owaves uses an holistic approach to overall wellness. For me, the coaches and app provided me with new strategies, tools, and support to assist with meeting health and wellness goals along with time management. I utilized Owaves during a very stressful and busy time in my life. Owaves allowed me to schedule my physical activity, monitor my eating, and the ability to interact with others with similar goals and health aspirations. Owaves was the extra motivating factor I needed to set goals and achieve them. Consistency is key with Owaves, the coaches encouraged good compliance. The coaches reinforced the benefits of using Owaves for planning, self care, and organization skills. The group meetups were a great feature too! The biggest gain for me was my ability to stop studying crazy hours and get to bed at 10:30 pm. This helped me function better throughout the day. I was able to complete more tasks and retain more information in class with this change.

Appendix B. Sample Enrollment Goals, in Students’ Words (verbatim)

A selection of goals recorded verbatim at onboarding, illustrating the range of what students hoped the program would change.

• “Set aside blocks of time for specific things.” Life is currently not planned beyond classes; would like dedicated times for nutrition and working out. “More structure.”
• “Figure out a good overlapping time with my best friend so that we can both go to the gym and eat regularly.”
• Find better balance — for example, prioritize self-care and play (over work).
• Learning how to manage free time / devote time to obligations.
• To be part of a holistic community.
• Organize my sleep and eating patterns.
• “Holistic approach to health and wellness rather than just focusing on gym or food — thinking about mental health as well and everything that goes into a healthy lifestyle.”
• Learn more about “how am I spending my time?”; be more productive and “streamlined”; manage meals better during stressful times.
• Discipline with sleep: “would like to be on a 9 pm – 6/6:30 am schedule because I feel more productive in the morning. At night I feel unproductive and am distracted by screens.”
• Make a plan of what to eat and when — “I feel uninformed mostly about the when.”
• Find an overall rhythm and balance in class / work / athletic schedule.
• Getting enough sleep; improve sleep hygiene; going to bed on time.
• Giving my day proper organization.
• “How to have free time!”
• Meal planning (versus “a protein bar for dinner”).
• Set a time for lunch / plan lunch / pack lunch.