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St. Olaf College retreat to teach participants how to reinvigorate careers, balance lives

nja
July 17, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? It?s never too late to learn more about yourself, never too late to dream, never too late to make those dreams come true, according to leaders of a two-day St. Olaf College retreat that will teach participants how to reinvigorate themselves and their careers.

Those who attend the early August retreat will be encouraged to take a new look at who they are (via insights provided by the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory), identify goals for their work and family life, and develop a strategy to achieve those goals and bring balance into their lives.

"Regaining the Vision," presented by the Center for Lifelong Learning at St. Olaf College, will be Friday and Saturday, Aug. 3-4. The task-oriented seminar will show participants how to produce results that they can take home and put into practice. The two-day retreat is for men and women from the mid-20s to mid-50s ? and beyond ? who want to bring balance to their lives and regain the pleasure they once had in their daily work.

"Consider it a summer vacation where you have permission to concentrate on the issues that are with you year ?round ? and to come up with ways to resolve them," said Karen Hansen, executive director of the St. Olaf Lifelong Learning Center. "This could be a marvelous resource for those who are pondering where to go with their lives and careers after their first experiences in the world of work, and for those seeking to make the last years of their careers (or the first years of early retirement) enjoyable and fulfilling."

Gary Anderson, leader of the retreat, has been director of the St. Olaf Career Development Center for 13 years, has helped guide hundreds of new and recent graduates into satisfying careers, and has conducted workshops for managers, pastors, homemakers and others bent on changing their careers and lives. Before coming to St. Olaf Anderson worked for nearly two decades in the private sector, serving as an executive at Control Data Corp.

Before coming to the workshop, participants will take the Myers-Briggs inventory, read Parker Palmer?s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, and write a short biographical sketch, a three-hour process that will help them start to focus on the work that will take place at the retreat.

Those who have taken the Myers-Briggs Inventory should find new insights in this seminar, according to co-leader Patricia Smith, associate director of the Career Development Center. Some tests focus on how employees fit within a work environment. This test will reveal what work is suited to each participant?s personality, and what challenges the participants may face in attaining it.

In small and large group sessions and during individual time for reflection, participants will examine what they?ve learned about their goals for their life and work, and will develop a plan to achieve them.

This is a process with which keynote speaker Chris Thomforde, president of St. Olaf College, is familiar, personally and professionally. Thomforde, now in his second college presidency, has served as a university chaplain, a college and university professor in the United States and Taiwan, a parish pastor and a forester. Early in his life, Thomforde weighed the choice of becoming a professional basketball player (he was drafted by the New York Knicks) against going to seminary.

The fee for the retreat is $225 and includes the book, a workbook, the MBPI and scoring, a light supper on Friday, and breakfast, morning break, lunch and afternoon tea on Saturday. Because of the intense nature of the workshop and the individual outside work required, it is strongly recommended that participants stay in Northfield or on campus, rather than commute. Housing is available for $25 per person per night.

St. Olaf and Northfield are ideal places for personal reflection. Just 40 miles south of the Twin Cities and 50 miles north of Rochester, the St. Olaf campus is quiet, with walking trails through woodlands and restored prairie and wetlands. Parking is plentiful and free.

For more information about the retreat, visit http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/cll/retreats/career.html. Registration is requested by Friday, July 20, to allow leaders to score the MBPI; after that date participation will be on a space-if-available basis. Participants can register by phone at (507) 646-3066 or 1 (866) 255-6523.

The retreat is the final offering in a new summer series of life enrichment retreats offered by the St. Olaf Center for Lifelong Learning. Established to provide "lifelong learning for your life," the series also included a spiritual retreat in June and a couples? retreat in July.

St. Olaf College prepares students to become responsible citizens of the world, fostering development of mind, body and spirit. A four-year, coeducational liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), St. Olaf has a student enrollment of 2,950 and a full-time faculty complement of approximately 300. It is one of Money Guide?s top 100 "elite values in college education today," and it leads the nation?s colleges in percentage of students who study abroad.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.