Volume 7, Issue 2

We arrived at the first tee at Howth Golf Club outside of Dublin to find a fire truck dousing a brush fire. I looked over to my host, Fr. John Galligan, the Chaplain at Dublin City University, and we both laughed. "Before you can play a good game of golf," he said, "you must have your fires put out." Although I knew he was referring to the psychological/spiritual side of the game, he also touched upon why I was spending a month at four colleges in Ireland: I wanted to understand student life on Irish campuses. I also wanted to connect more deeply with the culture, people, and spirit of my Irish roots. To do this, I had to escape the numerous brush fires back on my own campus in the United States.

This study examines three different models of building intentional community at Calvin College. Emphasis is placed on understanding if and how intentional communities can connect academics (mind), faith (heart) and service (hands) for a fully integrated life.

I was asked last fall as a vice president at Berea College to be one of a panel of faculty and administrators to make a few comments to the new student class about my spiritual journey— in two to three minutes! The purpose of the program was to help students see the religious traditions of some Berea staff, in the context of an institution that has an inclusive Christian heritage, a College motto "God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth," and that invites and welcomes peoples of all faiths to live and study. Admittedly, however, even though we have people of all major faiths on our campus from near and afar (over 65 Nations), the Berea student body is mostly Protestant and of a strong Biblical tradition. I was the person on the panel that represented the "high church," being Catholic, which, in the South, one might say is a "minority."

In an ever increasing global society, today's students are challenged at much greater levels to broaden their repertoire of understanding and conceptualization of both themselves and the world at large. With this personal evolution, comes the necessity for student affairs practitioners/advisors to provide increased opportunities for cultural development that will contribute to the overall personal, ethical, and civic development of students. This article offers forth a model for cultural practice to serve the personal development of culturally diverse student communities.

This paper reviews Henry and Susan Giroux's Take Back Higher Education within a larger discussion of neoliberalism and critical pedagogy. It examines the fundamental lack of our critical questioning from our students and our citizenry and the resulting emergence of the democratic consumer: the individual who uses his or her voice solely in the material realm. This passive consumerism that neoliberalism espouses can be combated through the use of critical pedagogy. Higher education must make it a priority to empower our students to be active citizens within their realities and work to be the shapers of the futures.

This essay explores the distinctive but often unacknowledged role of service in the experience of American higher education. It argues that service must inform a pervasive set of values that orient us to social and communal life.