THE REQUEST
In the conviction that life is more than a livelihood, [St. Olaf]
focuses on what is ultimately worthwhile and fosters the development of the
whole person in mind, body, and spirit... It stimulates students' critical
thinking and heightens their moral sensitivity; it encourages them to be
seekers of truth, leading lives of unselfish service to others; and it
challenges them to be responsible and knowledgeable citizens of the world.
-
We
seek to enhance the consideration of vocation and inculcate a culture of
developmental vocational reflection for multi-career individuals that will
begin at St. Olaf but will continue throughout their lives.
While we seek to enhance awareness of potential calling to
ministry, we also seek to encourage St. Olaf graduates to become lay leaders in
their own spiritual communities. We hope
to encourage all members of St. Olaf to reflect systematically on how they may
direct their lives so that, with the guidance of their spiritual authority,
they are able to feel and believe that they are making the right choices for
themselves and for the world, thus attaining one of the great triumphs of human
existence.
We
will use this award to institutionalize processes of reflection on vocation that
will be sustained at St. Olaf and in the lives of its alumni long after the
funds have been expended. We will do this by engaging the faculty, students,
alumni and staff to wrestle with issues of “the calling,” academically and
experientially, in the following ways:
· The faculty will introduce the discernment of vocation into curricular programs, integrate vocational mentoring into academic advising, discuss their own sense of calling and produce scholarship on vocation following a variety of faculty development opportunities.
· Students will be engaged in the discernment of vocation in parts of the academic curriculum, through the integration of vocational mentoring into all types of advising, and through experiential learning in which they will “live their learning” by investigating vocational options.
· Alumni will be engaged in the discernment of vocation through intentional programs which will bring both recent graduates, still struggling with issues of value and meaning, and more established alumni, living lives of worth and service, into contact with students seeking the guidance of others, to the potential benefit of both.
· Staff will be engaged in the discernment of vocation through alumni and community outreach programs.
The unique identity of the Lilly Program at St. Olaf will be the close linkages between the students’ academic curriculum, the integration of vocational mentoring into all types of advising and their interaction with alumni. The wider the circle of alumni, the greater the opportunities for students to bring reflection on vocation to life.
Opportunities for experiential learning will include internships in ministry on and off campus and interaction with annual on-campus interns from Luther Theological Seminary.
The
Program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service will be located in
the Center for Experiential Learning (CEL) and will be led by its Director who
will coordinate a leadership team consisting of the faculty directors of first
year programs and the ethical issues curriculum, leaders of spiritual, academic
and career advising, as well as other outreach programs. Academic advising will be linked with the CEL
to become the integral component of the program as vocational mentoring is
integrated into all forms of advising. In each aspect of the life of the
college, curricular, advising and outreach, we will integrate discernment of
vocation into existing programs, add it to programs still under development,
and introduce it in programs yet to be devised. These will include expansion of
St. Olaf’s international service/learning and internship opportunities.
We
will assess the impact of the introduction of these programs into each aspect
of the college’s life throughout the period of the award to ensure that they
will effectively inculcate a culture of reflection on vocation within the St.
Olaf community.
The
proposed program will strengthen and rejuvenate
The
concept of vocation asserts that life and work have meaning as the place where
our talents and the needs of the world cross. Examination of the relationship
between faith and occupational choice is a natural expression of the identity
of St. Olaf as a college of the church. We seek to participate in the program
in order to consolidate St. Olaf’s identity as a place that elevates spiritual
reflection and promotes lives of worth and service.
This
identity is founded in the College’s mission statement appended to this
proposal. A college of the
President
Christopher Thomforde spoke in similar vein in his April 2001 inaugural
address, also appended. He said, “the
mission of
Vocation
is fundamental to the identity and mission of
St. Olaf . . . provides and education committed to the liberal arts, rooted in the Christian Gospel, and incorporating a global perspective. In the conviction that life is more than a livelihood, it focuses on what is ultimately worthwhile and fosters the development of the whole person in mind, body, and spirit.
Like
most liberal arts colleges, St. Olaf draws the majority of its students from
within a several hundred-mile radius, in our case the upper
As
a group St. Olaf students are bright, hard working, oriented toward service to
others, and broadly curious. More than
one-third of our students are involved in one or more of the music ensembles
for which St. Olaf is internationally known.
We have seven student choirs, two orchestras, two bands, and a host of
smaller ensembles. The vast majority of
our students take part in off-campus study.
For many years we have been the leading undergraduate institution in the
number of students studying abroad. We
maintain five faculty-led, semester-long international study programs, as well
as 20-25 faculty-led, month-long international programs during Interim. Nearly half the student body takes part in
organized athletics. We sponsor
intercollegiate athletic programs in 25 sports, with several of our teams
nationally ranked year-in and year-out.
St. Olaf students successfully compete for the recognition and
educational support of many post-baccalaureate fellowship programs. In recent years we have had Rhodes,
Fulbright, Goldwater, Rotary, and Eisenhower scholars and National Science
Foundation fellowship winners. Our
students are admitted to top graduate and professional programs around the
country. St. Olaf is routinely among the
leading supplier of volunteers to the Peace Corps and the Lutheran Volunteer
Corps.
The development of the doctrine of vocation was a distinctive and influential feature of the Lutheran and Reformed wings of the Protestant Reformation. According to this doctrine all relational spheres—domestic, economic, political, cultural—are religiously and morally meaningful as divinely given avenues through which persons respond obediently to the “Call” of God to serve the neighbor in love. Human beings participate in God’s provident care for creation through their activities as parents, artisans, farmers, princes, and preachers. Trust in Christ issues forth in gratitude that motivates Christians to see themselves as participants in God’s providence through their callings. The particular shape action was to take within the “offices” of parent, spouse, judge, lawyer and farmer for example, was to a significant degree determined by intelligent discernment of obligations germane to the relevant context. “Faith active in love through one’s callings” became the benchmark of Reformation ethics. This vision of life as vocation, and the tensions embedded within it, has deep roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage, and has had a profound influence upon the Modern West.[3]
Though
other Christian, and other religious, traditions have analogous concepts, the
Lutheran tradition is noteworthy for its profound understanding of
vocation. Vocation frames all of life in
the perspective of God’s purposes and agency in the world. The foundation for the Call of God is the
God’s gracious gift of love and forgiveness.
Gratitude for this gift motivates people to use their gifts and
abilities in freedom to serve others. In
this broad sense, all relational fields—spouse, parent, child, friend, work
place, citizen, and more—are “callings” through which people respond to God’s
Call with lives of love and service.
Through this lens life is “more than a livelihood”; mundane actions
shaped by the myriad of social relations through which individuals engage the
lives of others are “ultimately worth while.”
All social relations become opportunities for “unselfish service to
others,” “places of responsibility,” locations from which to promote love and
justice in the world.
Accordingly,
the Mission Statement of the College declares that
. . . In the spirit of free inquiry and free expression, [St. Olaf] offers a distinctive environment that integrates teaching, scholarship, creative activity, and opportunities for encounter with the Christian Gospel and God’s call to faith. The college intends that its graduates combine academic excellence and theological literacy with a commitment to life-long learning.
. . . Through
its curriculum, campus life, and off-campus programs, it stimulates students’
critical thinking and heightens their moral sensitivity; it encourages them to
be seekers of truth, leading lives of unselfish service to others; and it
challenges them to be responsible and knowledgeable citizens of the world.
One’s
“job” is not merely a place to make money; it is primarily a place to serve
larger communities. Vocation generates a
moral and religious dynamic that ensures that work processes are humane and
humanizing, that the products of work are conducive to the common good and ecological
health, and that the poor and the oppressed of the world receive special
consideration. Vocation at its best is a
catalyst for constructive critique and transformation of society toward God’s
justice and shalom. It relates
particular policies and practices to the larger ends of a given occupation, and
ultimately to God’s purposes for creation.
God’s
Call and callings are mediated. The
mediators include parents, preachers, teachers, administrators, coaches,
friends, scholars, artists, musicians, and more. Modern economic, social, and cultural life
corrodes the sense of life as vocation.
Religious communities must resist these forces. As a college of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of America, St.Olaf has a distinctive responsibility for
mediating God’s Call and callings to students and other members of the college
community. Students in particular are at
crucial junctures in their lives, shaping their vision of the world and their
places within it, and making decisions about values, marriage, and
occupation. As Martin Marty put it
recently in his speech to St. Olaf Alumni, "'Vocation' is part of what
Jews would call the Lutheran shtick among leaders at St. Olaf. Faculty and counselors care about seeing
students here find their vocation, their calling, that package of philosophy
and action that is irreplaceably and irreducibly theirs.”
St.
Olaf alumni will be among the leaders of church and society. St. Olaf is “the leading source of Lutheran
seminary enrollments from the nation’s Lutheran Colleges . . . the leading
source of volunteers for Lutheran Volunteer Corps for every year of LVC’s
existence,” and a “leading collegiate source of Peace Corps volunteers.”[4] St. Olaf alumni rise to the top of their
chosen professions, whether they are in medicine, law, business, education, or
the arts. It is imperative for the
larger welfare of society that these leaders engage their occupations with an
active sense of vocation. And given the
pressing need for church leadership, it is all the more crucial to encourage
our “brightest and best” to consider professional church leadership
positions. For “unless Christians take
their calling seriously within the church there is not much hope of their
taking it seriously in the world.”
The
college is fulfilling its mission. But
it can fulfill this mission more effectively by becoming more intentional and
more integrated in its efforts to foster a sense of vocation. This is an opportune time for the college to
reexamine its mission in relation to vocation.
A recent St. Olaf document makes the point well:
We
seek the support of the Lilly Endowment to help us contribute to this “logos”
through the introduction of the intentional discernment of vocation into St.
Olaf’s academic and experiential learning programs, to integrate vocational
mentoring into all types of advising and to provide students with opportunities
to experience expressions of vocation
President Christopher M. Thomforde convened the planning committee after the award of the planning grant. The committee’s purpose, as stated in the planning proposal, was to determine how we would integrate consideration of vocation into the academic program, advising of all types and institutional outreach. President Thomforde charged the committee to develop a program which accentuated the college’s existing strengths and to focus this development by means of a single big idea. The committee subsequently produced the program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service.
During the spring semester curricular, advising, and outreach sub-committees met to develop programs within their respective areas and circulate them to other members of the planning committee. During a weeklong workshop at the end of May the proposals from each sub-committee were integrated into a unified program.
Members of the planning committee
visited Lilly Endowment Programs at Gustavus Adolphus, Grinnell, and
The Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy had a prominent place in the planning proposal to the Lilly Endowment. As stated in that document, the Marty Chair is featured in the current Fram, Fram, Forward St. Olaf capital campaign through which we hope to endow it to $2 million. To date donors have provided $1.3 million toward that goal. Since the full endowment has not yet been raised and an incumbent has not yet been appointed, we decided not to give the activities of the future chair-holder a prominent place in this proposal. Nevertheless, the future Marty Chair holder will be a member of the oversight committee of the Program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service (see IV) and will contribute to its program activities and intellectual leadership in other ways.
The planning process produced an important programmatic innovation: the inclusion of alumni/ae. A recent graduate with commercial experience in a high technology start-up company returned to St. Olaf to join the staff of our Office of Alumni and Parent Relations. We invited him to join the planning committee where he proved to be a most valuable resource. He demonstrated to us the benefits that would accrue to the program if we included alumni/ae. We invited some alumni/ae to visit the committee one morning and they expressed interest in and enthusiasm for the program. Out of his initiatives came the Tripartite Mentoring Dialogue, an integral part of the program.
St.
Olaf seeks support from the Lilly Endowment in order to build upon existing
efforts to encourage discernment of vocation so that we may create a more intentional,
comprehensive and campus-wide approach to consideration of the meaning of
vocation, the discernment of each individual’s vocation and the exploration of
potential opportunities to live out that calling.
Such
questions are already broached in many different corners of St. Olaf. And while
the manner in which they are undertaken is responsible and well informed it is
also sporadic and unrelated. Our program is designed to create linkages between
existing initiatives, add new undertakings that complement and add value to
existing initiatives, and take advantage of the synergies that result.
There
are two distinctive characteristics of the St. Olaf Program for the Discernment
of Lives of Worth and Service. One is the integration of vocational mentoring
into all forms of advising; this is the core of our program. The other is inclusion of alumni in the
mentoring process. We seek to expand the campus community to embrace alumni who
represent a barely tapped resource that can contribute much to the processes of
vocational discernment experienced by our students. The inclusion of alumni
also helps them to reflect upon their vocational journeys, thus providing
benefit to both sides and establishing the proposed mentoring relationships on
a firm foundation.
Through
developmental and intentional processes we will engage the faculty, students,
staff and alumni of St.Olaf College in the intentional discernment of vocation
in general and their own calling in particular. The goal of this initiative is
to institutionalize systematic discernment of vocation within the St. Olaf
community. The ultimate beneficiaries of this discernment process are the
students. As their discernment is refined through contact with alumni so the
students become agents of change within the alumni. The agents that introduce
and maintain this transformative process, however, are the faculty and
staff. A major focus of this proposal is
the adequate preparation of faculty and staff members so that they may
introduce and maintain intentional processes of discernment of vocation within
all aspects of the life of St. Olaf College.
We will present the intended program as it addresses the four constituencies it seeks to affect: the faculty, the students, the staff and the alumni. Within each constituency we will elucidate how the program will operate within the areas of the academic curriculum, vocational mentoring and advising of all types and outreach activities. Within the area of student advising we will identify programmatic activities intended to integrate vocational mentoring into academic advising, spiritual advising and career advising.
The faculty of any educational institution are its active institutional memory and the planners and executors of its future mission. Their wholehearted participation in the Program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service is fundamental to its success. We will encourage that participation through opportunities for scholarship on vocation, faculty development programs, the integration of vocational mentoring into academic advising, faculty participation in the tripartite mentoring process and other forms of outreach.
1:1 Engaging
the Faculty: through Scholarship and Publication
As Christopher Coble noted in his presentation to the AACU conference on Spirituality and Higher Education (April 2002, San Francisco), the amount of serious scholarship on the consideration of vocation is limited. Some of the classics in the existing literature are indicated in footnote 3. We propose to provide opportunities for members of the St. Olaf faculty to publish scholarship on vocation and to elevate on-campus discussions about vocation.
a) Lilly
Vocational Scholar
Members
of the St. Olaf faculty, particularly those in the Departments of Philosophy
and Religion, have well-established records of publication on topics pertinent
to the theological consideration of vocation at the national and international
levels. Professor Doug Schuurman’s Vocation After Christendom soon to be published by William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company is but the most recent example. In order to focus this scholarly tradition
specifically on questions connected with vocation we request funds to provide
released time of one course in each semester to the Lilly Vocational Scholar to
enable published academic scholarship on the theological consideration of
vocation. All tenured and tenure-track
faculty members will be eligible to apply but the selection committee will expect
to see evidence of a strong record of prior publication before awarding a
scholarship. In addition to preparing publishable scholarship Lilly Vocational
Scholars will be expected to act as a resource to contribute intellectual
leadership to faculty development activities organized by the program
especially the Summer Faculty Mentoring Dialogue (see 1:3b).
b) Faculty Vocational Scholars
Faculty Vocational
Scholars will serve as resource persons to departments and other sub-divisions
of the college that are seeking ways to integrate discernment of vocation and
civic engagement into their programs.
One faculty member in each of the five Faculties of the college will
receive one course-released time to reflect upon and prepare teaching and other
materials about the vocation of and the spiritual implications of working
within specific academic disciplines or career paths. They will meet in
seminars with colleagues from their own faculties to consider pedagogical strategies for elevating
discernment of vocation and civic engagement in the academic and experiential
learning curricula. They will also be important resources for enriching the
faculty mentoring dialogues (see 1:3 b) and the triangular mentoring dialogues
(see 1:3 a) mentioned later in the proposal.
St. Olaf requests support to integrate pedagogical strategies for the discernment of vocation and the curricular preparation for lives of worth and service into the existing Faculty Development Program on Ethical Issues and Normative Perspectives (EIN) and the new faculty development program for First Conversations.
a) Faculty
development workshops for EIN
All
St. Olaf students are required to take a course that meets the criteria for
EIN. The syllabi of these courses must
integrate practical consideration of actual ethical problems with moral
reasoning and an understanding of relevant normative perspectives, including
one Christian perspective. In order to prepare faculty colleagues to teach such
courses St. Olaf, conducted in 1996-98 and 2001 three rigorous faculty
development workshops which provided 35 instructors with the equivalent of two
graduate courses in philosophical and theological ethics. Three foundations -
Bush, NEH, and ACLS, plus the endowment of the Boldt Chair in the Humanities
funded the workshops. These efforts have
been continued by weekly lunchtime discussions for all participants. As a
result faculty members who did not have formal graduate training in ethics now
teach many EIN courses across the curriculum.
Due
to administrative assignments and other personnel changes, however, only 20 of
these colleagues are now able to teach EIN courses with any regularity. Though approximately one dozen theologians
and philosophers with appropriate prior graduate training also teach EIN
courses there is a need for more appropriately prepared St. Olaf faculty
members to teach more of them. This presents us with a timely opportunity to
introduce courses focused on aspects of vocation into the EIN curriculum.
We
request funding for two elements of the EIN program. Firstly, partial support for a fourth faculty
development workshop to prepare ten faculty members from a diverse range of
disciplines who wish to prepare for EIN courses with themes intended to
facilitate discernment of vocation.
Secondly, support for two “refresher” workshops aimed at participants in
earlier workshops as well as the dozen “non-workshop” philosophers and
theologians who teach EIN courses. The
fourth “regular” workshop will increase the number of faculty members
academically prepared to teach EIN courses and both types will contribute to
focus faculty members intellectual attention on issues connected to vocation in
their preparation for and development of EIN courses.
The
“regular” workshop will operate with a revised syllabus which will focus more
explicit attention on theological and philosophical writings on vocation such
as Langdon Gilkey’s Shantung Compound,
Lee Hardy’s The Fabric of this World: Inquiries
into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work, Doug Schuurman’s Protestant Vocation after
Christendom, and the body of scholarship on
servant-leadership. The workshop would also emphasize passages relevant to the
discernment of vocation in texts by Luther, Calvin, Aquinas, and Jonathan
Edwards traditionally used in the workshop.
Examples of new EIN courses which would provoke reflection on vocation
might include a religion course on “Feminist Religious Ethics: Care and
Covenant;” or a political science course on “Habits of the American Heart;” or
a sociology course on “Social Capital and Vocation;” or an economics course on
“American Capitalism and Calling: from Cotton Mather to Enron.” The regular
faculty development workshop would consist of a seminar in the spring of 2004,
for which participants would receive one course-released time, followed by a
five-week seminar the following summer.
The
two separate “refresher” workshops would be held for two weeks each in the
summers of 2004 and 2005. Each would
involve at least ten participants drawn from previous workshop participants and
from the other EIN teachers. The reason
for having two workshops is to keep them to a reasonable size and to
accommodate those who can participate during one of the summers but not the
other. These workshops will use some the
above listed resources, and will discuss effective ways to make the EIN courses
an opportunity to engage students in linkages between vocation, career,
occupation, and living lives of worth and service. Existing courses within
which it would be possible to include more intentional consideration of
vocation include Philosophy 252 "Ethics and the Good Life,"
Interdisciplinary Studies 232 "Ethics, Medicine and Society," French
399 "Motherhood as Vocation in French History, Culture and
Literature;" Religion 207 "Christian Theology and the Moral
Life."
The
directors of the workshops could be the co-directors of the first three,
namely, philosopher Ed Langerak and theologian Doug Schuurman.
b)
Faculty
development released-time for First Conversations
First
Conversations offers an integrated approach to the two required courses of
students’ first year at St. Olaf, Religion 121 and General Education 111 (or
the “First-Year Seminar”). For each pair
of courses included in First Conversations the participating instructors
develop a common approach to the chosen theme, planning sequences of readings
and assignments to be carried out over the course of the entire year. A body of
literature on intellectual development in the college years asserts the
importance for students of making connections among the several parts of the
curriculum, and further, of beginning to make these connections during the
first year. The impetus to establish First Conversations responds to the
findings of this literature and comes from the profound success of the
distinctive curricular model pioneered by The Great Conversation. The strength
of this model lies in the convergence of several features of these programs:
(1) they create learning communities that exist for longer than a single
semester; (2) they create communities that include students and faculty; (3)
faculty in different departments collaborate in the development and conduct of
the programs; (4) the programs provide sustained, multidisciplinary attention
to interesting problems, and so deepen students’ appreciation for the
complexity of human inquiry; and (5) the programs integrate students’ classroom
and residential experiences.
So
far, faculty members in religion and another field who have linked their
courses in appropriate ways have arranged a few sections of First
Conversations. The emerging First
Conversations Program presents us with an opportunity to incorporate attention
to vocation during the first year of students’ college experience, when they
would be ready to reflect on the relationships among majors, careers,
occupations, and living lives of worth and service. It would also ensure a foundation in the
students’ first year for subsequent study about and discernment of vocation
through both proposed program activities and existing initiatives.
Our need is to be able to find the time to enable faculty to work together to integrate ideas about vocation into the first year religion and writing courses. Thus we request support to enable two pairs of faculty members each to utilize one course release time in order to work together at integrating themes that encourage discernment of vocation in their linked courses for each of the five years of the award.
a)
Participation in triangular mentoring dialogue
Central
to the integration of vocational mentoring into all forms of advising will be
the triangular mentoring dialogue between students, alumni, and faculty. Each
group would include students, alumni and faculty; who would meet regularly
(e.g. four times during the year) with Faculty Vocational Scholars (see 1: 1 b)
playing a leadership role.
Staff from the Center for Experiential Learning will collaborate with each of the five Faculty Vocational Scholars to facilitate a continuing dialogue between alumni, students and faculty around a topic related to vocations in the faculty member’s academic discipline. Thus during each year of the grant, five different dialogues on vocation would occur. The format of each dialogue will depend on the preference of each Faculty Vocational Scholar. A group could meet over the course of some specified time (regularly during a specific month), periodically throughout the academic year (e.g. four times during the year) or intensely for one day. The dialogue of each group would be enhanced by the use of technology, i.e. a computer-based system for continuing the dialogue on-line.
The group could be identified around a specific academic or career-related interest such as an academic major or professional field, or it could be more eclectic. The group dialogues, organized and facilitated by CEL, would create time and space to think about vocation. Faculty members would gain a greater understanding of how students identify and come to accept their own passions and how a calling plays out in career paths other than the academic one. They would thus become more confident about addressing issues of calling with their own advisees.
The roles and functions of students and alumni/ae within the mentoring dialogues will be considered below (see 2:2: iii a, and 4:1)
b) Summer
Faculty Mentoring Dialogue
To
prepare for these Dialogue sessions eight faculty members each year will be
invited to participate in a 2 day summer workshop conducted by the Center for
Experiential Learning. The workshop will
draw upon campus resources including the College Pastor, career counselors, the
servant
leadership director, the Lilly Vocational Scholars and Faculty Vocational
Scholars, and friends of the college who are eager to advance discussions about
vocation. Through these summer workshops
faculty members will gain greater understanding of how students identify and
come to accept their own passions and how a vocational calling fits with
learning, work, and service. Faculty
members will gain expertise and confidence about addressing issues of a
vocational calling in their own teaching and with their academic advisees. These summer workshops will also develop a
model for the academic year Dialogue sessions, outlining ways that alumni/ae
can contribute, introducing activities to elicit student involvement, and
presenting case studies for exploring topics.
Students are the primary constituents of the Program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service. While there are many opportunities for students to consider questions of vocational discernment at present at St. Olaf the purpose of this program is to make such discernment more assured. We will engage them through the academic and experiential learning curricula, through the integration of vocational mentoring into advising of all types and through opportunities to experience vocation through outreach programs.
a) Courses
in Ethical Issues and Normative Perspectives
As
mentioned above (1:2 a) all St. Olaf students are required to take a course in
Ethical Issues and Normative Perspectives (EIN). The idea of vocation, which
contains multiple normative implications, could be incorporated as an ethical
issue. Students could be provoked to think about what sort of ethical
consequences might follow when one sees vocation as a central motif in living a
life of worth and service. It could also
be incorporated as an important element in a Christian normative perspective,
as students are asked to “think from the inside” of a perspective that is
structured by a sense of covenantal calling. New EIN courses including themes
connected to the discernment of vocation will strengthen and rejuvenate an
important component of the general education curriculum at St. Olaf.
b) First
Conversations paired courses
As
mentioned above, First Conversations offers an integrated approach to the two
required courses of the first year at St. Olaf, Religion 121 and General
Education 111 (or the “First-Year Seminar”).
Normally these courses are offered separately, and taken in the fall and
spring of the first year. But through
First Conversations students may take the two courses in a coordinated sequence
that focuses on a particular theme. For each pair of courses included in First
Conversations the participating instructors develop a common approach to the
chosen theme, planning sequences of readings and assignments to be carried out
over the course of the entire year.
Students who enroll in First Conversations also live in the same
residence hall. The program will appeal
especially to students who want to join in a community of shared inquiry with a
group of twenty peers and two faculty, who want to integrate their classroom
life and their residential life, and who want to enjoy sustained attention to
an interesting theme. Although it is
smaller in scope, First Conversations seeks to offer benefits like those of the
other “conversations” programs at the college (The Great Conversation, American
Conversations, and Asian Conversations).
Faculty
teaching First Conversations courses will collaborate with the Co-Directors of
Vocational Mentoring to develop components that will introduce students to a
career development process integrating academic and experiential learning as a
means to identify and pursue a calling.
c)
CEL
Servant-Leadership Programs
The
Office for Servant Leadership (OSL) at St. Olaf College was created within the
Center for Experiential Learning to provide opportunities and programs that
encourage students, faculty, staff and alumni to lead through service or serve
through leading. The mission of the
office is to motivate and support
students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae as they develop the power to serve and
lead for the common good. The OSL
follows the pedagogy of experiential learning: study-action-reflection as a way
to vocational discernment.
The
Servant Leader begins with a heart and a call to serve others and through that
service emerges as a leader who can revitalize and transform existing
institutions, organizations and ways of thinking. The Program for the Discernment of Lives of
Worth and Service will provide the OSL with the opportunity to engage students,
faculty, staff and alumni/ae in a process of intellectual study, action and
reflection that will lead to a vocation of action and service to others.
It
will also permit the OSL to move from a position of strength to one of greater
strength.
d)
Experiential
Learning Planner
To
make the idea of vocation or calling come alive for each first-year student,
the introduction of the idea of vocation through a component in the first-year
seminar/conversation course will be followed up with a one-to-one planning
session focused on each individual student's needs
and
interests. The Center for Experiential Learning has developed the Experiential
Learning Planner, a tool for assisting students in planning experiential
learning activities to complement their academic program. The Experiential Learning Planner has already
proved valuable in helping students identify activities for exploration of
their vocational interests. The award
will:
§
enable the CEL
to become systematic in fostering the exploration of vocation in every
first-year student through an individualized planning session,
§
ensure that each
student has the opportunity to voice his/her ideas for contributing while at
and after St. Olaf, and
§
create a
connection to the CEL that will persist, allowing for subsequent conversation
and exploration of each student's calling after their St. Olaf years.
e) International
Service Learning Opportunities
We seek to build on St. Olaf’s
longstanding tradition of looking outward internationally, to provide
opportunities for service learning abroad which will encourage students to
reflect on their faith and lead them to live out their vocation in contexts of ethnic,
cultural and religious diversity. This would involve careful integration of
on-campus work with off-campus experience, and careful direction from faculty
or staff on campus.
A variety of international internship opportunities in church-related
institutions such as senior citizen’s homes, orphanages, day care centers, and non-governmental
organizations of various kinds. We would have immediate connections through the
ELCA and organizations such as Lutheran World Relief and the Higher Education
Consortium for Urban Affairs, but there probably are many others that could be
considered. This would bring a global perspective to students’ re-examination
of what it means to be a Christian facing the challenges and opportunities
offered by the world in the 21st century. Lilly Vocational Scholar and Lilly Faculty Vocational
Scholar would be utilized to provide faculty guidance in student reflection of
experiences. The program on Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service would
provide student stipends for summer service overseas and would cover the costs
of establishing such contacts.
In
his recently published book, Making
the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds,
Richard Light points out that:
Good advising
may be the single most underestimated characteristic of a successful college
experience. Graduating seniors report that certain kinds of advising, often
described as asking unexpected questions, were critical for their success.[6]
He
reports one political science major responding to effective advising as
follows:
When he smiled
and said he was “beginning to get a sense of me,” it was like music to my ears.
He was the first professor who was more interested in trying to understand what
matters to me than in immediately discussing the strengths and weaknesses of
the Rawl's position on justice, with little sense of what all this means to me. [7]
Advising
and mentoring have important aspirations and can have very powerful effects
when undertaken well. At St. Olaf, as at
many other similar institutions, the time, energy and creativity necessary to
good advising are often eroded by many other demands and pressures. These
include daily schedule constraints, advisee and advisor attitudes towards
advising, a constantly-changing advisor pool, faculty advising overloads and
lack of departmental advising forums, inadequate faculty released time and/or
recognition for advising rewards, and insufficient support staff for the
academic advising. Our attempt to use the Lilly award to overcome those
impediments is a distinctive feature of our program.
We
seek to the assistance of the Lilly Endowment to:
· elevate the significance of advising and mentoring of all types in the life of St. Olaf,
· introduce a culture of mentoring for the discernment of vocation within all types of advising
· engage faculty, students, staff and alumni in a three-way mentoring program which will integrate the life experiences of others into the on-campus education of students
· link Academic Advising with the Center for Experiential Learning and temporarily increase the mentoring personnel of the CEL to facilitate this change.
Following study by a task force, St. Olaf College established its Academic Advising Center in 1999 and placed it under the leadership of a faculty member with .5 FTE released time. Academic advising at St. Olaf College encourages the integration of mind, body, and spirit as students pursue academic, career, and life-long goals.
The
Academic Advising Center has attempted to promote Developmental Advising on the
St. Olaf campus. Winston, Miler et. al. define Developmental Advising as:
. . . as a systematic process
based on a close student-advisor relationship intended to aid students in
achieving educational, career, and personal goals throughout the utilization of
the full range of institutional and community resources. It both stimulates and
supports students in their quest for an enriched quality of life. Developmental
advising relationships focus on identifying and accomplishing life goals,
acquiring skills and attitudes that promote intellectual and personal growth,
and sharing concerns for each other and the academic community. [8]
They
argue that attainment of an institution’s mission of development of the whole
student is most likely to be realized when the academic affairs and student
affairs division collaborate in the implementation of Developmental Advising.
In a healthy developmental advisor/advisee relationship the dialogue moves
naturally between issues of schedule planning, course registration, and
graduation requirements to the broader issues of vocation, avocation, and “a
life of worth and service”. The academic advisor, among others, then takes on
the role of mentor. As mentioned above, however, a variety of impediments can
compromise the roles of academic advisor and vocational mentor. In order to overcome these impediments and
effectively integrate advising and mentoring we intend to link Academic
Advising with the Center for Experiential Learning. We seek the support of the
Lilly Endowment so that we may more successfully guide and support students as
they pursue “lives of worth and service” by
· Providing more time and resources for advisors and advisees to meet and exchange ideas.
· Increasing the involvement of prospective/new students, alumni, and their parents.
· Clarifying and celebrating the integration of vocational mentoring into academic advising.
· Coordinating vocational efforts with student support services, academic departments, staff, and administration.
We
request support from the Lilly Foundation to enable us to improve crucial
advisor/mentor relationships through provision of the following:
Joint Co-Directors of Vocational Mentoring, who will be appointed from with the CEL (see IV) will lead the integration of vocational mentoring into all types of advising and all other student support activities. They will collaborate with all other offices and programs within the college to introduce practices which will lead to advisors and mentors integrating discernment of vocation into whatever other activity they are leading. While the Director will be responsible for overall leadership of all aspects of the program it will be the Co-Directors of Vocational Mentoring who will have primary and immediate responsibility for the development and integration of vocational mentoring: the heart of the program. Their duties will include:
· Working in collaboration with the Director of Academic Advising to encourage faculty members to integrate vocational mentoring into academic advising
· Promoting activities conducive to the discernment of vocation in all student support centers
· Developing, gathering, and disseminating advising/mentoring literature and publications
· Working with the Office of Alumni and Parent Relations, alumni and parents to broaden and empower students’ life and career choices
· Creating, in conjunction with the Director of Academic Advising, an Exploration Program for students who are undecided/undeclared about their major(s) or career.
b)
Summer
Faculty Mentoring Dialogue
This is discussed at 1:3 b above.
To
extend the culture of discernment of vocation throughout the campus, it will be
necessary to educate student leaders.
Introducing students who are in leadership positions on campus to the
idea of vocation/calling not only promotes recognition of their own giftedness
and calling but also provides a mechanism for furthering the discussion of
calling into student-led activities. We seek to develop retreats for student
leaders who will advise other students by virtue of their position or who are
in a position to integrate the idea of calling in the scope of their
responsibilities. At these retreats the
Co-Directors of Vocational Mentoring, the Lilly Vocational Scholar, the Faculty
Vocational Scholars and others will guide the student peer advisors to think about
how they will integrate discernment of vocation into their counseling
activities. Peer advisors will include members of the following:
Academic Advising Center Peer Advisors
-
The
AAC's peer advisors assist students in exploring academic goals within the
context of possible career and life-long goals. They work individually with
students to encourage exploration of
majors and assist with academic planning that will allow students to
meet their
identified
goals.
Center for Experiential Learning Peer Advisors -
Peer Advisors in the
CEL work closely with first-year and sophomore students who are exploring
majors and with upper class students identifying career options which will
encompass identified passions and skills.
CEL peer advisors are an important resource in helping the CEL
provide
all interested students experiential learning opportunities that complement the
student's academic program and foster development of vocation.
Junior Counselors and Resident
Assistants -
J.C.'s
and R.A.'s are considered to be an integral part of the Residence Life program
at St. Olaf. As leaders in the St. Olaf
community, the student life staff advise and counsel students on academic,
personal, and social matters and are in a position to be influential with
students
as
they work through issues related to finding their niche in the world.
MentorNet Leadership Team -
The
MentorNet Leadership Team coordinates a student-led program that matches
students with alumni mentors to foster identification and development of each
student participant's vocational path. An
important role of the MentorNet leaders is coordination of monthly seminars
that
engage
both student and alumni participants in reflecting on their vocation.
SOAP Leadership Team -
The
St. Olaf Alumni Partnership is a student organization dedicated to creating
opportunities for students to interact with and learn from alumni in a variety
of career fields. The SOAP Leadership
Team plans seminars and coordinates events that bring students and alumni
together
to
converse about issues relevant to career development.
Ole Ventures Leaders –
Ole
Ventures is a student organization whose core purpose is to encourage and
provide opportunities for students to explore entrepreneurial careers. Ole Ventures leaders utilize alumni who have
pursued entrepreneurial careers as a source of inspiration and knowledge
for
introducing students to the entrepreneurial spirit.
Volunteer Network Leaders -
The
St. Olaf Volunteer Network is committed to providing volunteer opportunities
for students that benefit both St. Olaf and the larger community. Student
leaders provide coordination for a wide variety of volunteer activities that
provide student participants with the opportunity for personal insight into
"making a difference" and the place of service in their lives.
CARE Ministry Team -
CARE
Ministry serves the St. Olaf community by providing counseling and an active
prayer ministry to students by students.
Its mission follows Jesus' model of healing and shalom for individuals
and communities. CARE ministers endeavor to be resources for any kind of need
and to build healthy relationships throughout the campus. As a prayer group, CARE ministers
steward
the life of the community by gathering its prayers and addressing them to the
Lord God.
Efforts
to change attitudes are lengthy, complex and multi-faceted. It is crucial to integrate career advising
and vocational mentoring into the academic arena in some systematic way. The co-directors of vocational mentoring and
other CEL staff with collaborate with faculty teaching the First-Year Seminars
and First Conversations courses to develop course components that will
introduce students to a career development process integrating academic and
experiential learning as a means to identify and pursue their calling. Individual follow-up meetings will assist
students to think through a strategy that will allow them explore their
particular interests and identify their passions.
2:2:ii Engaging
Students: through Vocational Mentoring and Spiritual Advising
a)
Chapel
Service series on Vocational Discernment
Chapel
talks are a well-known feature of the daily chapel service at St. Olaf College
because they are broadcast to the metropolitan area of Minneapolis/St. Paul and
south central Minnesota by the campus public radio station WCAL (fm89.9). We will organize a series of chapel talks
around the theme of discernment of vocation and make them available in printed
and possibly audio formats.
b)
Hosting a
Seminary Intern
Being an internship site provides a congregation with the opportunity to be a part of the mission of the larger church by forming and educating future leaders of the church. In addition, the ministry outreach of the Campus Ministry office will be expanded, as each intern brings new ideas and enthusiasm for ministry to the congregation. In this particular setting, college students discerning their vocation in ministry see and get to know someone in the process of becoming ordained.
Congregational leadership is undergoing a shift. Congregations are becoming staffed by pastors and professional lay persons, rather than “pastors only” staffs. Additionally, large congregations are searching for pastors and lay staff members with specific specialties. The interns will develop in co-operation with other congregational leaders, and the college congregation will see this model of ministry leadership.
We intend to receive one Luther Seminary intern each year, from the Master of Divinity program (MDiv). The activities of the student’s pastoral formation, which will include preaching at least once a month, leadership and planning of worship, teaching, visitation, counseling, and other forms of motivation will all be very visible expressions of vocational commitment to ministry. The interns will be chosen by the Seminary’s Director of Contextual Education, who will identify early in their seminary career those interns who have an interest in working with young adults and have a special interest in helping others develop an understanding of vocation.
A longer-term goal is for St. Olaf to serve as a model with clergy-lay staffing, intentionally pioneering a new way for ministry, which could inspire other college campuses and traditional congregations.
2:2:iii Engaging Students: through
Vocational Mentoring and Career Advising
a) Triangular
Mentoring Dialogue
Among
the essential aspects of the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service project
are the integration of vocational mentoring into the advising program (both
academic and career) and the integration of alumni/ae into the dialogue about
vocations. The Triangular Mentoring Dialogue will bring together faculty,
students and alumni/ae for face-to-face and on-line discussions about vocation
and how it is connected to learning, work and service.
The
Center for Experiential Learning will collaborate with key individuals on
campus, including the Lilly Vocational Scholars, to develop the summer
workshops for faculty and then will facilitate the organization and conduct of
the academic year Dialogues (this process is described in detail in section
1:3a). During each academic year as many
as eight different dialogues on vocation will occur. These Dialogues, enhanced by e-mail/phone
communications among participants, will give students the opportunity to
connect their classroom learning, their career and vocational advising, and
their passions in life through a focused discussion about how vocational
calling plays out in learning, work and service. These Dialogues are not intended to show
students "how to live" but rather to give them a forum for exploring
their vocational calling and various ways to blend such a calling with the
realities of work and life. The
expectation is that students will be attracted to these Dialogues based on
their evolving academic and career
interests. The CEL staff will recruit students and
assist them in identifying the Triangular Mentoring Dialogue that complements
their academic work and career interests.
2:3 Engaging
Students: through Outreach
A
variety of organizations already bring alumni to campus for a variety of career
panels, forums, etc. Expand the scope of
these alumni events to integrate a more intentional reflection on vocation;
invite faculty to participate in the discussions.
a) MentorNet
This student organization that matches students with alumni mentors for one academic year, already enhances each student participant’s sense of vocation albeit in an indirect way. An intentional focus on “calling” and an invitation to the alumni mentors to think about and share their reflections on their own sense of vocation would enhance the experience for both student and alumni participants. We seek to do this by integrating an outside speaker on vocation into the opening seminar and continuing the emphasis on vocation in a daylong retreat mid-way through the program.
b) Summer
Vocational Community Internships
These internships will be based on the Lutheran Volunteer Corps intentional communities. The Office of Servant Leadership working in cooperation with the Office for Church Relations and Luther Seminary in St. Paul will develop a program that will allow 5 or 6 students to live at Luther Seminary in St. Paul and engage in internships at area churches or service organizations. Along with the internship, students will participate in the triangular mentoring initiative on-site at Luther Seminary. This mentoring will focus on vocational discernment and the life of clergy and lay volunteers at area congregations. Students will live together in an intentional community at the Seminary, sharing meals, evening reflection workshops, and common readings.
c) Servant
Leaders Honor House
St. Olaf students will live together in an honor house. Students of the house will be engaged in an intentional community coupled with learning effective servant leadership skills through workshops, reflection exercises and community service. Members of the house will plan and implement a community service initiative in the Northfield, Rice County, or Dakota County area. Students during fall semester will participate in weekly forums (workshops) focusing on servant leadership. Workshop would include skill development sessions, guest speakers (alum), team building and other activities. Second semester will culminate in a community service initiative.
d) Summer
Bible Camp Stipends
According to David Tiede, President of Luther Seminary, participation in summer Bible Camp is one of the most important influences encouraging young people to enter seminary. Yet contemporary economic pressures can deter students from joining summer Bible Camp. They might have to earn money to help pay for their education or support themselves. We seek to alleviate those pressures for some by using Lilly funds to provide stipends of $1,000 to supplement the Bible Camp salary of 12 St. Olaf students. In exchange, they will be asked to participate in at least one service activity during the following academic year.
e) Church Interns
St. Olaf regularly involves students with organizations in for-credit internships. While many of these internships follow the traditional route with for-profit firms, more students are looking to undertake their work in non-profit, service or religious organizations. The intent of the Church Internship program is to respond to this increasing need, specifically in relation to church congregations, and to do it in the context of intentional vocational reflection.
Each year the Center for Experiential Learning will work with the Office of Church Relations, the College Pastor, and Lilly Vocational Scholars to identify congregations in the Greater Twin Cities area which will receive interns during St. Olaf's January interim. This project will build on the college's increasing attention to diversity, seeking congregations within the inner city.
These same campus groups will work together to identify interested students and to offer training sessions to prepare the students for the January internships. While it is anticipated that the student interns will contribute to the congregations they serve, the primary goal of this program is to give students the opportunity to "live their learning" by exploring vocational interests and connecting that exploration to classroom work back at St. Olaf.
Each student will have a faculty supervisor (one of the Lilly Vocational Scholars) who will communicate with the intern, make a site visit to the intern's congregation, and offer a reflection seminar when the student returns to campus. After the first year of the program, previous student interns will participate actively in the promotion of the program, through interaction with new interns, and by contributing to the post-internship reflection.
Multiple
career changes are now a fact of life for many college graduates. As they make
career transitions, reviewing their values and vocation can help alumni make
informed decisions about the career moves that will be most satisfying. Career
decisions made in the context of values and vocation have the greater chance of
being fulfilling as part of a whole life that addresses mind, body and spirit. Alumni, staff and other members of the
community who have been and are struggling with issues of values, identity and
vocation can be a valuable resource to assist younger people engage in the
discernment of their own vocation.
The
CEL includes alumni/ae by involving them in student-oriented programs. This outreach is facilitated through the
college's Office for Alumni/Parent Relations (APR). Student-driven programs
mentioned elsewhere in this proposal are based in the CEL but conducted with
the assistance of APR. This same
cooperation is evident in other outreach programs, such as the various regional
alumni breakfast groups, where CEL staff regularly provide updates on new
initiatives and present opportunities for alumni/ae to work with students, the
alumni/parent campus events, which feature CEL programs, and student
"venture visits" to companies and organizations where Olaf alumni/ae
are working.
4:1 Alumni
a) Participation in triangular mentoring dialogue
This has been discussed previously within this proposal (see 1:3 a and 2:2 ii a). Alumni would benefit from time set aside to think about their own passions and career directions but also from contact with the faculty/scholars. They would be given the opportunity to share insights with students while gaining additional insight for their own career paths from each other and the synergy of the group.
b) Dialogue on Vocation
Three times each year the CEL and the APR will bring 20 alumni/ae together with the 5 Faculty Vocational Scholars to reflect on the own vocational commitments and how better to develop integration of vocational mentoring into program components. These events will serve to recruit alumni/ae into program activities.
c) Focus on Vocation
The Center for Experiential Learning will host an annual gathering of faculty, alumni and students to share insights on vocation. “Focus on Vocation” will include a diverse group of alumni, a group representative of a range of academic disciplines and vocational choices. The format of the event will allow for a keynote speaker, individual reflection on the formation and development of one’s vocation, and dialogue with others on the meaning of vocation in one’s life. These events will serve as a symbolic affirmation, an annual focal point, of the whole program. Functionally, it will unite its components, symbolically, it will direct energy and attention toward it and remind individual members of all constituencies; faculty, staff, students and alumni/ae that this is a program that has significance for them.
a) Vocational
Retreats
Vocational choices and decisions are part of a lifelong process of human development. While students seek direction as they shape their future lives, adults may come to question their earlier decisions and seek help in discerning their vocation in accordance with their values and making appropriate career adjustments. The drive to reassess vocational choices often manifests itself during three different life stages:
§ Early career when people find themselves mismatched to their first jobs.
§ Mid-career or mid-life when people want more balance among the components of their lives, such as work, relationships, health and service, and/or when they recognize the need to reconnect with values expressed earlier in life.
§ Late career as people face transition to retirement and have the opportunity to choose different work and lifestyles. Retirees “need to be needed.” Finding new ways to express values and live out vocation are key transitional issues at this life stage.
In
August 2001 and January 2002 the Center for Experiential Learning through the
St. Olaf Center for Lifelong Learning offered Career and Life Balance Retreats
in order to provide a means of assisting alumni/ae with issues of vocation.
Following that model, vocational retreats will be offered on and off campus as intensive weekend experiences that free participants from their daily routines and allow them to focus on their personal priorities. They will be offered to the general public as well as to alumni, staff and parents in order to broaden lifelong learning opportunities beyond traditional St. Olaf constituencies.
The Center for Lifelong learning will hold an on-campus test retreat in the first year of the program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service. In the following academic year vocational retreats will be offered off campus in regions most likely to generate sufficient participation. In subsequent years the focus of different retreats may be made more specialized and varied (by life stage for example).
Staff and retreat leaders will continually evaluate the success of publicity efforts, participation rates and participant feedback to refine content, timing, segmentation and location. Participants will be asked to evaluate the retreats immediately afterward, then again 6 and 18 months later. The objective of follow-up evaluation is to determine whether the skills they learned and the action plans they developed helped participants in their personal quests. The retreats will be a source of recruitment for the triangular mentoring relationships and a means of outreach for the Lilly Vocational and Servant-leader scholars.
We request funds to enable planning and promotion of the retreat to and beyond the usual St. Olaf College constituency, to implement and evaluate retreats, to provide stipends for retreat leaders and those who will train them, and cover the travel expenses for leaders of off-campus retreats
b) Provide
Access for Students to the Conference on Worship, Theology and the Arts
Instituted in 1955, the Conference on Worship, Theology and the Arts began as a theological conference for ministers with a mission to provide deeper understanding of spiritual texts and an opportunity for intellectual discussion and spiritual renewal. Over the years the conference has expanded to address the needs of worship planners and church musicians as well as pastors. The average adult attendance of 530 includes 175 ordained ministers.
During
the five-day conference, five major plenary sessions deal with theological
themes and incorporate scholarship and inspiration. Nine worship services
exemplify worship team planning, integrate art, liturgy and music, and minister
to the conference participants. Approximately 70 breakout sessions illuminate
theological, musical and artistic themes. At least six choirs, which rehearse
daily, contribute to worship services. Three music-reading sessions exhibit
musical works for worship planners.
We
wish to expand the ecumenical reach of the Conference to new presenters and new
participants. A cross-denominational conversation among professionals will
benefit all who participate by identifying common challenges and solutions
while enlarging the network of potential support for church staff.
The conference provides an excellent opportunity for students whose vocational discernment is tending toward ordained or lay ministry to meet with and learn of the lives of those who lead congregations. We will use Lilly funds to cover the costs of attendance and provide stipends for St. Olaf students who wish to attend the Conference and develop the program in a more ecumenical way and publicize it to a more ecumenical audience.
The
Program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service will be located in
the Center for Experiential Learning (CEL) at St. Olaf College. A brochure
describing the CEL is attached to this proposal. In order to facilitate the integration of all
aspects of the program the Center for Academic Advising will be linked with the
CEL.
The
CEL was established to provide every interested student with experiential
learning opportunities which are connected with and complementary to the St.
Olaf liberal arts curriculum. According to its mission statement, the CEL
. . . is to provide a coordinated, comprehensive, classroom-based experiential learning program that is academically sound, inclusive of all academic disciplines, and connected with all sectors of the domestic and global society so as to prepare students for lives of service, work and life-long learning.
The Director of the Program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service, responsible for overall management of and accountability for the program, will be the present Director of the CEL, Professor Bruce Dalgaard who will give up his present teaching responsibilities to devote .5 FTE to the program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service. Bruce R. Dalgaard joined the St. Olaf faculty in 1992 when he was appointed as the Husby-Johnson Chair in Business and Economics. Throughout his career, Dalgaard has combined scholarship with community outreach. As a scholar he was a Fulbright Research Fellow to Japan and is the author of more than three dozen scholarly articles and three books, including Money, Financial Institutions and Economic Activity. During his 12 years at the University of Minnesota, he served as Executive Director of a statewide non-profit organization which served hundreds of teachers and thousands of students through a staff of 10 with a budget of upwards of $750,000 annually. In 2002 Dalgaard stepped down from the endowed chair in order to launch the college's new Center for Experiential Learning. He continues to hold academic appointments in the Departments of Economics and Asian Studies.
Two Co-Directors of Vocational Mentoring, Brad Kmoch and Pat Smith, will assume responsibility for the integration of vocational mentoring into all types of advising and all other student support activities. Brad Kmoch is the current director of the office for Servant Leadership in the Center for Experiential Learning. He has 10 years of experience as a career counselor helping St. Olaf College students discern their vocational path. His educational background includes a MS in Counseling and Student Personnel, with an emphasis in Experiential Education and Learning from Mankato State University and a BA in Economics and Religion from St. Olaf College. Pat Smith is the Director of the Office for Career Connections in the Center for Experiential Learning; she has served St. Olaf for nineteen years, thirteen of those years in the career center. With a background in education, counseling and career development, Pat has worked extensively with both college students and adults, assisting them in articulating their passions, identifying obstacles to achieving their goals, and putting together plans of action. They will each devote .25 FTE to leadership of this program. Other colleagues or new hires will replace them in their present duties.
A career counselor whose position will be increased from .75 to 1.0 will assist them. Increasing a present .75 FTE position to 1.0 will provide administrative support.
The Program Director will be assisted in the development, implementation and formative evaluation of the program by a Program Committee, which will consist of:
the Program Director,
the two Co-Directors of Vocational Mentoring,
the faculty Directors of the Ethical Issues and Normative Perspectives and First Conversations curricular programs,
the Directors of Academic Advising, Career Advising and the College Pastor,
the Directors of the Office of College/Church Relations and the Center for Lifelong Learning
the Lilly Vocational Scholar.
the occupant of the Marty Chair, when appointed.
This is a proposal to initiate and institutionalize change. After the program has been implemented the intentional discernment of vocation will have become a focused and expanding feature of campus and alumni life at St. Olaf. The planning process has made it clear that there is faculty interest in this program. Existing programs indicate that there is bedrock of interest and activity that can now be focused and expanded by this program. The attitudes and aspirations of the St. Olaf faculty are entirely supportive of a program such as this. Colleagues from many departments teach the EIN courses considered above (see1:2 a and 2:1a) which must be taken by all St. Olaf students. A willingness to engage students in questions of faith is expected of all colleagues appointed to the St. Olaf faculty. The faculty development opportunities presented by this program will make faculty members’ discernment of vocation more intentional in their own reflection, in their interaction with students and in their interaction with each other.
The administration and the Board of Trustees of the college enthusiastically support this program.
This program seeks to initiate and institutionalize change, and its authors recognize that institutionwide change is a long-term endeavor, extending beyond the life of the grant period. It is intended to make the college a place where all members of the community intentionally consider their faith commitments in order to discern what is or will become a life of worth and service for them. This program will increase the numbers of students, faculty, staff and alumni seeking an understanding of vocation as a spiritual calling, and exploring and developing the vocational aspects of their own faith and personal identity. Their understanding of the concept of vocation will be enhanced; they will meet challenges to explore and better understand their own callings; and students in particular will have experiential opportunities to develop and test the nature of their commitment to a life of worth and service.
We intend to document the changes brought about within the institution, and evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation program components with two kinds of evaluation instruments. One set of instruments will be principally formative in nature, documenting the implementation of specific program components and measuring the satisfaction of program participants with the program activities in which they participated. The second kind of evaluation is more summative in nature, intended to provide insight on the impact of various program components on the participants' understanding and pursuit of vocation.
Both kinds of evaluation instruments will be designed in collaboration with Dr. Jack Fortin, Executive Director of the Centered Life/Centered Work project in the Center for Lifelong Learning at Luther Seminary, and Dr. Greg Owen, Consulting Scientist at the Wilder Foundation. Drs. Fortin and Owen have developed the Centered Life-Centered Work: Congregational Survey for use by the Center for Lifelong Learning at Luther Seminary. A copy of this survey instrument is attached to this proposal. It was developed over the course of six years for use in congregations. Ten “key areas,” or “forces,” in church life were identified that have either a positive or negative impact on congregational members' perception of how they are living out their faith in their daily work. The survey was developed to assess the satisfaction of individuals with their congregation’s efforts to equip them and hold them accountable to each other so that they may live faithfully in their places of employment and their communities.
The experience Dr. Fortin and Dr. Owen will bring to
their collaboration with St. Olaf is likely to enhance not only the evaluation
component of the project, but the conceptual underpinnings of the project
itself. Over the course of our work
together, we hope to lay the foundation for the development of a model of
assessment of vocational discernment on a campus of a college of the
church. We have met several times with
Drs. Fortin and Owen to agree upon a collaborative course of action to evaluate
the success of the implementation of our program.
1 Initial Formative evaluation of program
implementation
We will use established methods of formative evaluation with an established record on this campus to provide immediate initial evaluation of the implementation of program components in the first year: course portfolios and participant feedback forms.
1:1 Course portfolios
Participants in the faculty development workshops for EIN and in the released-time program supporting First Conversations will be asked to prepare a course portfolio at the conclusion of the course(s) they developed or revised after participation in the relevant faculty development workshops. The portfolio would highlight the integration of vocational themes into their courses. Its contents would include the course syllabus, any assignments focusing on vocation, descriptions of in-class activities devoted to consideration of vocation, samples of student work, and a narrative reflection by the faculty member on the meaning of vocation and his or her understanding of and commitment to his or her own vocation. The workshop director(s) will provide a written portfolio review to the project participant and to the Director of the Program for Lives of Worth and Service, which can inform our first report.
Course portfolios have been used very successfully at St. Olaf in previous grants fostering curriculum improvements, most notably in the Oral Communication Across the Curriculum grant funded by the federal Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, 1997 - 2001. The value of this evaluation strategy is that it is simultaneously evaluative and educational; the preparation of the portfolio and the narrative reflection advance the faculty development purposes of the project.
1:2 Participant feedback forms
The Director of the Office of Academic Research and Planning will collaborate with the Director of the Center for Experiential Learning and with the leadership of selected project activities to design evaluation questionnaires to be completed by participants at the conclusion each of the following project activities:
a. The EIN Faculty Development Workshops
b. Vocational/Academic Advising Integration Workshops
c. Triangular Mentoring Dialogues
d. EIN courses
e. First Conversations paired courses
f. CEL Servant-Leadership program
g. All summer internship programs
h. MentorNet programs
i. Vocational retreats
Results from the course portfolios and the participant feedback forms for the above project activities will serve both an accountability and an improvement purpose. They will permit us to make meaningful annual reports to the Endowment and to make any changes necessary to ensure achievement of our goals. Formative evaluation will occur throughout the period of the award.
2 Summative
evaluation of project impact
This component of project evaluation is intended to provide some insight into the impact of project activities on project participants. We will work closely with Dr. Fortin and Dr. Owen to design a Vocational Discernment Questionnaire that measures changes in the participants' understanding of and commitment to their vocation under the auspices of this project.
2:1 Intended project outcomes
The principal outcomes for project participants, irrespective of the particular project activities in which they might engage, are as follows:
a. The development of an explicit, theologically-informed understanding of vocation as "calling"
b. Increased reflection on the concept of vocation in general and on one's own vocation in particular
c. Increased confidence in the discernment of one's own vocation
d. Increased commitment to one's own vocation, both attitudinally and behaviorally
2:2 Development of the Vocational Discernment
Template
The St. Olaf Director of the Office of Academic Research and Planning, the St. Olaf Director of the Program will jointly develop the Vocational Discernment Template for Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service and Drs. Fortin and Owen. The instrument will serve as a "template" in that it will consist of a core series of questions directed to the above project outcomes, but will be adapted for administration in the context of different project activities. The questionnaire would include both open-ended and closed-ended items, and would be designed for administration to participants at the beginning and end of a specific project activity (a workshop, a dialogue, an internship, a course, etc.). The design of the Vocational Discernment Template will involve the following steps, executed over two years. Each stage in the design and administration of the instrument will provide useful information about the initial years of program implementation. Each year will provide a more refined set of instruments which present more sophisticated results and understandings as the project unfolds.
a) Consultant recommendations for template
content
At the beginning of the second year Drs. Fortin and Owen will review formative evaluation results collected in the first year of the project, conduct limited on-site observations of selected project activities (e.g., participate in one or two days of summer faculty development workshops, attend a Community Time Departmental Advising Meeting, etc.), and conduct focus groups and/or interviews with participating faculty, students, alumni, project leadership, and the Director of the Office of Academic Research and Planning (ARP). Based on this information and on their expertise with analogous efforts at Luther, they will make two sets of recommendations: one will be about the content of the Vocational Discernment Template, the other will be their findings about the strengths and weaknesses of the initial implementation of the program.
b) First draft of Vocational Discernment Template
A sample of St. Olaf project participants (faculty, alumni, students, staff) will collaborate with the St. Olaf Director of the Office of Academic Research and Planning, the St. Olaf Director of the Center for Experiential Learning to prepare a first draft of the Template and will submit it to Dr. Fortin and Dr. Owen for review. A list of the specific project activities for which the instrument will be adapted for administration will also be submitted. This work will be completed by the end of the first semester of the second year of the project, and the first draft will be administered in the second semester of the second year.
c) Consultant recommendations for revision and adaptation of the first draft and recommendations for data collection procedures
After administration of the first draft and by the end of the second year of the program our consultants will make four kinds of recommendations: (1) revisions to the basic template; (2) the project activities most suitable for administration of the instrument; (3) how the template should be adapted for administration in the context of those activities; (4) procedures to be followed in administering the instrument and tabulating and interpreting results. The basis for their recommendations will be their experience and expertise derived from their work on the congregational survey.
d) Preparation of second draft
At the beginning of the third
year of the project, selected project participants, the Director of ARP, the
Director of CEL and Drs. Fortin and Owen will complete revisions to the
template and prepare different versions of it template for administration in
various program activities. The second draft will be administered during the
third year and a final draft of the instrument will be available for use at the
beginning of the fourth year.
It is hoped and intended that this instrument for evaluating development in vocational discernment will not only have a variety of applications within the St. Olaf College community but that it inspire other applications in similar communities.
As stated in the section entitled ‘Background to the Request’ (see II) the program described in this proposal is a natural extension of the identity and mission of St. Olaf College. We seek to integrate discernment of vocation into the pre-existing commitment to educate the whole person for a life of worth and service.
Since this is St. Olaf College’s second request for an implementation grant from the Programs on Theological Exploration of Vocation we would like to indicate some institutional changes which have occurred since the first, unsuccessful submission, and which present a much more fertile opportunity for the successful implementation of this, the second implementation proposal.
The proposal submitted during the first, invited, round of awards was produced in conditions of institutional change. The Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations, within the Advancement Division, was understaffed at that time. President Edwards had announced his resignation and the leadership of the college was in a state of flux. Authorship of the proposal fell largely to a single faculty member who could hardly have envisaged an effective campus-wide program. While it was not surprising to the present authors that the Lilly Endowment declined St. Olaf’s first request, it was most gratifying to learn that we had been given a second chance to implement a program on the theological consideration of vocation through the award of a second planning grant in a competition much more open than the first.
We hope this indicates that the Lilly Endowment recognized that the second planning proposal and this submission come from a college much better prepared to devise and implement an effective program than was the college that submitted the first ones. Christopher M. Thomforde has presided over the college for three semesters and has formally led the planning process that produced this proposal. The director of the planning process was Professor Jim May. He is now well placed to implement the program he helped to design: he has become the Provost and Dean of the College. The planning committee that undertook the process was drawn from representatives of all aspects of campus life, academic, advising and outreach. The program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service will be located in the new, but well-established Center for Experiential Learning led by a creative and vigorous director, Bruce Dalgaard, and already endowed at $5 million. The proposal was primarily written within the Office of Government and Foundation Relations now relocated into the Academic division and headed by a faculty member.
We seek this award in order to make and institutionalize change. To make more intentional the discernment of lives of worth and service in the academic, advising and outreach programs of St. Olaf College through integration of vocational mentoring and by drawing alumni/ae into the campus community. Once that change has been institutionalized the attitudes, processes and behaviors it sought to cultivate will remain embedded in the life of the college way beyond the life of the award.
The maintenance of these efforts to institutionalize change will not, however, lack material support beyond the life of the award. St. Olaf has provision for both the programmatic support and intellectual leadership of the program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Meaning.
The Center for Experiential Learning has a significant measure of financial security provided by its own endowment and there are reasons to believe that an award from the Lilly Endowment will encourage further donations to it. The CEL was a priority within the recent Fram Fram Forward St. Olaf capital campaign that will end on December 31, 2002. (see attachment) The overall campaign goal of $125 million has already been exceeded. The campaign goal of $5 million for CEL has been met. A substantial proportion of the donations to the CEL came from a single donor whose interest in the success of its activities continues. Successful utilization of a Lilly award by a program within the CEL will increase the donor’s propensity to give further to it, securing further the home of the program for the Discernment of Lives of Worth and Service.
[3] See Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), and M. Weber, The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons, with forward by R.H. Tawney (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) for two provocative accounts of this impact upon political and economic life in the Modern West. See Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), and their more recent book, The Good Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) for provocative diagnoses of how American culture and institutions lack the deeper moral and theological contexts necessary for their proper functions. Alisdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), provides a philosophical (and more pessimistic) account of the breakdown of earlier cultural and philosophical frameworks for moral life and ethical theory. The position of Luther and Calvin was developed in relation to two alternative views: the late Medieval Catholic view, which restricted "vocations" to ecclesial occupations (priest, monk, nun, etc.), and the Anabaptist view, which affirmed the vocational status of many mundane roles but condemned occupations involving retributive justice and coercion (prince, soldier, judge, executioner, etc.). Luther and Calvin emphasized the importance of rightly distinguishing the "two kingdoms" in order to affirm the vocational status of occupations rejected or subordinated by these two schools. See, for example, Luther, "Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should be Obeyed" (Luther's Works: Volume 45: The Christian In Society II, eds. W.I. Brandt and H.T. Lehmann [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962], 75-129, and Calvin's "Against the Anabaptists" in John Calvin: Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines, ed. and trans. B.W. Farley [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1988]).
4 St. Olaf College: Identity and Mission in the Twenty First Century www.stolaf.edu/church/identity/religion. html
[5] ibid. p.2
[6] Richard J. Light, Making
the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001) p.81
[7] ibid. p.82
[8] Winston, Miler, Ender, Grites et. al. Developmental Academic Advising (1984)