Spring 2013

Whole Self, Whole Life, Whole World: A Plan for Concordia’s Future

By President William Craft

A student with no church ties finds herself drawn to seek postgraduate work to aid the homeless through Lutheran Volunteer Corps; a biology major bound for med school throws himself into the labor of finding a vaccine for hookworm; a young man from southern Sweden comes to Moorhead to major in international business and to learn Mandarin Chinese. What do these experiences have in common? They all involve the practice of the liberal arts, and they exemplify the aspirations of Concordia’s strategic plan for 2012-17: “Whole Self, Whole Life, Whole World.”

College plans often meet real skepticism and sometimes they deserve it. If such documents emerge only from a small circle of leaders, they may build little energy and even less value. And so it’s not surprising to find Benjamin Ginsberg mocking them in “The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters,” writing that each new president ignores the institution’s past and declares, “Thou shall have no other plan before mine.”

But we write plans for good reasons. If faithful to mission, conceived through the collective creativity of the college and sharply attuned to the realities of our current life, they enable us to act with purpose and with market savvy. They enable us to fashion an education that leads our students to flourish – and to transform a world so much in need of their gifts.

The plan adopted by Concordia’s Board of Regents in October 2012 arose from three sources:

The visionary mission statement written more than 50 years ago by Dr. Carl Bailey, former dean of the college
Dozens of conversation engaging faculty, staff, students, Concordia graduates and college regents in the fall and spring of 2011-12
The fierce pressure from beyond academe to address questions of cost and of lasting worth in higher education.

Students gather for communion in the Centrum Every graduate knows Bailey’s statement: “The purpose of Concordia College is to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.” The new plan arises from this wellspring that defines our global liberal arts college of the church. Inspired by the mission, the plan affirms the liberating life of learning that our students will practice throughout their lives and the liberating love of God that sets us free to serve our neighbor, close by and around the world.

Grounded on this foundation, the conversations that started in the president’s house on the corner of Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue in September 2011 always began with two open questions: “What brought you to this college?” and “What aspirations do you have for Concordia that have not yet been fulfilled?”

With astonishing frequency, three themes emerged in response:

The yearning for the examined, purposeful life
The hope for an education that would engage students at their highest level of mind and heart and that would ready them for the highly volatile work environment they will enter after graduation
The conviction that we have only started to lay claim to our distinction as a college committed to influence the affairs of the world – to our recognition of the joy and necessity of global education.

From these thoughtful and informed convictions came the “declaration of intent” that defines the strategic plan: Concordia College will offer an education of the whole self, for the whole of life, for the sake of the whole world.

The heart of this plan is what I want to share with you here: what it is, and why it matters, as we seek to transform young lives so that our students may transform the communities they serve.

Whole Self

At Concordia, we care about the economic welfare of our students: 96 percent or more of them in any given year receive grants in aid from the college; students who come to Concordia and stay have more than a 90 percent chance of graduating in four years (a rate far, far higher than at public schools); each year, 98 percent or more of our graduates report that within six months of Commencement they are employed, in graduate school or in full-time volunteer work like Young Adults in Global Mission.

But this is not all we care about: As the Rev. Elly McHan told our first-year students at Opening Convocation this past fall, “You are here not just to go somewhere but to become someone.” We want the whole self to flourish, and so we will seek, as the plan says, to lead students into life-long reflection on their identity, purpose, and engagement in the world.

What will we do to guide students into such an examined life? I highlight these five initiatives:

Raising the question of identity and purpose as a defining part of orientation
Designating both our associate campus pastor and the faculty director of our new program in faith and leadership to guide students’ discernment of their callings
Opening – this past September – the Lorentzsen Center for Faith and Work within the Offutt School of Business to set our new program in an ethical framework
Inaugurating – in fall 2012 – the President’s Seminar, which invites the entire campus several times each term to gather and reflect on our collective purpose as a liberal arts college of the church
Reaching out to our partners in mutual ministry, as in the new initiative in which we have joined forces with regional bishops to help prepare mid-career pastors for service in larger ELCA congregations.

The faculty and staff who spoke so movingly of their longing for the examined life called us to remember – in a time of nonstop distraction and clashing ideals – that we are to live life abundantly and in service to neighbor as citizens, professionals and people of faith.

Whole Life

At Concordia, we follow the long-established expectation that learning in courses must be assigned a certain number of credits and that in order to graduate, students must “earn” a given total of credits to be awarded a baccalaureate degree.

Offutt School of Business classes started being held in Grant Center in January. But we are increasingly conscious that this is not enough – not enough for learning and not enough to distinguish ourselves in the higher education marketplace. Put bluntly, students can earn credits anywhere now, on campus and online.

At Concordia, we are out to change the shape of the American baccalaureate. In the words of the plan, we will call students to achieve an education focused not on credit accumulation but on building competence, creativity, and character. What will we do so that students will be prepared to thrive throughout a whole life – a life in which we know that most will change jobs 10 or more times? Among key initiatives,
I point to these three:

Devising forms of learning that transcend the traditional one-course unit to challenge students and faculty alike to address the “muddy problems” that require us to go beyond any one academic specialty for effective solutions – forms of learning like a semester-long environmental sustainability study that combines science, culture and public policy
Increasing funding for undergraduate research and for demanding internships in both for-profit and nonprofit settings
Most radically, changing the arc of a four-year degree so that, year by year, students have both more freedom and more responsibility as learners –creating a Concordia experience in which the senior year will look very different from the freshman, with students in that final year spending most of their time in research, in internships, in creative projects, in working out real problems in real time with real accountability – just as they will when they begin their working life or the rigors of graduate school.

The faculty and staff who envisioned an education that would engage every student at their highest level of heart and mind called us to ready students not merely to graduate but to be competent, agile and strong in character for the whole of their lives.

Whole World

Those of us who earned our college degrees in the ’70s, ’80s and even ’90s became accustomed to think of “international education” as a semester abroad or, at some schools, a May or January term. We cherish those experiences, as we should. They often opened to us cultures and ideas of which we had not dreamed. Concordia has been a leader in study abroad, earning the Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization in 2006, and always placing among the top colleges in the U.S. for the percentage of students who study internationally.

The Concordia Orchestra spent a weekend at Concordia Language Villages. This is good, but it is no longer sufficient, nor does it draw on all of our strengths, including the remarkable resource of Concordia Language Villages, which hosts 11,000 participants each year, both pre- and post-college learners. So, in the words of the college plan, we will make global learning fundamental to every Concordia student’s experience, from the first year through the senior. Why does this matter? It matters because every endeavor – cultural, political, artistic, religious, philanthropic – demands a global fluency, an understanding of and connection to partners not only in our region but in far flung places around the globe.

What will we do to foster that global fluency among our students, to their own good and to the common good of the larger world? Among many creative initiatives, I feature these five:

Engaging all students in the “local global” community of Fargo-Moorhead so that they will from the start know themselves to be citizens of a place of surprising diversity in education, in business, in faith life and in mutual care – leading them to opportunities like Better Together, the student organization that promotes dialogue and service across the many faith traditions found in our hometown and across the world
Increasing the population diversity of our own student body to more closely match the world in which our graduates will live and work
Enabling Concordia’s undergraduates to learn at Concordia Language Villages – as when our symphony orchestra students spent time at the Finnish Village in preparation for their tour featuring the work of Jean Sibelius
Leading our students to continue language and cultural study beyond the usual requirements of one, two or three courses by offering them opportunities to put that learning into practice long after requirements are satisfied – including immersion study at the Language Villages
Challenging our students and ourselves to practice thoughtful and informed stewardship of our natural resources as we seek to live responsibly and to preserve the vitality and beauty of God’s creation – as in the creation of the Concordia Ecohouse, a living/learning site for our students.

In this commitment to global learning for all, we hear the still inspiring voice of Dr. Bailey, calling us to influence the affairs of the world as faithful, thoughtful and informed citizens.

In all, we look to move from mere program to practice, from moving students through a set of requirements to calling them, as Pastor McHan says, to become someone: to learn the habit of the examined life, to develop intellectual discipline and creativity and courage, to see themselves not alone but as neighbors in work and love and service in God’s wide world.

Photos: Sheldon Green/Chris Shinn

Photo captions:

Research led by Dr. Jennifer Bath, assistant professor of biology, may someday lead to a hookworm vaccine.

Concordia reaffirms its place as a global liberal arts college of the church.

Offutt School of Business classes started being held in Grant Center in January.

The Concordia Orchestra spent a weekend at Concordia Language Villages. The orchestra studied the work of Jean Sibelius at Salolampi, the Finnish Village.

Read the full Strategic Plan for Concordia College (2012-2017)