The Dovre Center for Faith and Learning
The Dovre Center will help encourage and sustain discussion
on issues relating to faith and learning. Colleges of the church
have a real stake in this discussion. Here, if nowhere else in
our society, should religious beliefs be raised, discussed and
critiqued in an informed manner. Our society needs informed and
reasonable discussion of religious beliefs, and our students bring
that same need with them when they come to our campus. To carry
on open reflection on religion is clearly one of the most important
contributions Christian colleges and universities can make to
the church’s mission of enlightened understanding of the
faith and educational service to society. In a culture where public
discourse, especially about matters of religion, is not encouraged
or even welcome, colleges of the church may offer one of the most
effective venues for such deliberations. Our students, our society
and our religious institutions need such reflection, and Christian
colleges have a front-line responsibility in responding to this
challenge.
A Christian higher education is a way to conduct education in
the context of the Christian faith as an identity-forming process.
Christian colleges assist this meaning-seeking, identity-forming
process by cultivating an environment in which faith and learning
can be kept in dynamic relationship, and where scholarly study
and teaching can be understood as spiritual activity. We are most
affected in life by those persons who have embodied genuine humanity
and faith for us and opened up our own possibilities to do the
same. Spirituality comes through the encounter of individual lives
as they are given for the needs of others. Spirituality comes
in mentoring, lecturing, writing, questioning, listening and serving
- in sojourning with others in the community of inquiry that is
academic life. It is through personal encounter and experience
that education and understanding are born as we meet the mentors
who assist us in giving rise to thought. Faith frees the mind
for open inquiry and creative reflection because we are saved
by the grace of God - not by our own understanding. Keeping faith
and learning in creative relation is one way of directly responding
to the spiritual challenges of our time.
Because it is our faculty who most consistently model and embody
the relating of faith and learning for students, a primary mission
of the Dovre Center is to offer development and research opportunities
to faculty. As resources and further needs develop, these activities
may be expanded to include students, staff and the wider constituency.
The programs of the Dovre Center include annual summer workshops
to introduce new faculty and staff to the Lutheran tradition;
in-depth workshops on particular issues relating to faith and
learning; focused research on the effectiveness of faith and
learning strategies; an annual faculty lecture on faith and
learning; and hosting distinguished scholars and lecturers on
faith and learning issues.
